Same Time Next Week
by o-seastarved
Summary: "I actually came out here to be alone." "Yeah. Me too." But he made no effort to move. [ A met in the laundry room at 1am College AU. Alternatively, Clarke and Bell get off by annoying each other and many complications arise outside of the laundry room! ]
1. Chapter 1

_September_

11pm. Clarke opened her laptop. She had twelve hours to write a ten page research paper.

This should be fun.

She couldn't concentrate. Maybe that's why she was resorting to drastic, weird measures like sitting on the folding table of her floor's laundry room. Cross legged. In her sweats. Pen in between her teeth. The harsh fluorescence of the lights made everything look harsh and ugly and her eyes burned. Which was the point. No comfort. No distractions. It was just her and Karl Marx and a black space marker blinking against a blank page. What a threesome.

College was off to a great start.

By one in the morning she had exactly two and a quarter pages which was practically a sign from God to take a break to the common room for coffee. She padded back down the hall in her socks, grimacing when the the hot liquid met her tongue. It tasted like sugar and styrofoam and bitterness.

When she got back to her practically radioactively bright lair that was the laundry room, she was startled to find someone there. As if the space belonged to only her. She knew it didn't, but his presence was all at once invasive and irritating.

"Great," she mumbled.

"Bothering you, am I?" He didn't look up, but a deep and rough voice pricked at her ears as he shoveled crumpled up clothes into the washing machine.

"Who does laundry at 1am on a Tuesday?" Her bored derision slipped out of her before she could think better of herself, so she rolled with it.

The guy turned his head, all dark curls in his eyes and a smirk in his cheekbones. "Who uses a laundry room as a library?"

Clarke cocked an eyebrow and hopped back up onto her counter, folding up her legs and shoving an open textbook out of the way and behind her. She waited for him to finish loading his clothes, choose a setting, wait for the water and add his detergent so she could get a move on with her paper. She figured the rhythmic mechanical thrumming of the machine wouldn't be so bad. It might even be soothing.

But he didn't leave.

Instead, he took a seat on the one lone, out of place chair, all hard plastic and orange, and began to balance it on its two hind legs. After several seconds it'd tip forward and the metal legs would snap against the tile floor. And then he'd do it all over again.

Clarke had written exactly zero words in the last five minutes. She felt a huff rise in her chest. "Really?"

He threw her a sidelong glance as he patted his jacket, riddled with pockets, distractedly looking for something within them.

"You're just gonna wait here? Not leave and come back?" Clarke's irritation was growing. At her stranger's nagging presence. At the way his dark features and dark hair and dark clothes contrasted so strongly with the brightness of the rest of the room. At how the fluorescent lighting didn't make him look harsh or ugly.

"I wasn't aware there was only one way to do laundry," he said and pulled out a small pocket sized book and leafed through the pages until he found where he'd left off. And then he was quiet.

Well, she was officially dismal at making new friends.

At two fifteen in the morning she had only three pages, he got up briefly to switch his clothes into the dryer, and she proceeded to knock her head into the heavily coated paint of the brick wall.

"You should look at Britain."

"Excuse me?" Clarke peeled her forehead and any hopes she had at getting a decent grade on this paper up off the wall and glanced over to him. He didn't look up.

"Marx wrote his manifesto for them, not for Russia. So why didn't the revolution happen there? Look into what was going on with Britain. Then you've got a thesis. Instead of a book report."

Clarke gaped at him. Bastard had snooped around her things while she was getting coffee. But bastard sounded like he knew what he was talking about. With a flurry of movement she shuffled around to find her book on British history.

"And?" she said expectantly, flipping through pages without knowing where to land.

"Reform. They reformed," he said gruffly and then didn't say anything else for the rest of the time his laundry tumbled.

When the timer buzzed and his clothes, fresh and hot, piled into his basket, Clarke was on a roll. Her pen was back in her mouth, her brows furrowed in deep concentration. Her fingers couldn't type fast enough for all of the realizations and connections she was making with history.

"Just think. All that lost time criticizing my laundry technique. You'd be done by now," he said and she caught a slight twinkle in his eye as the corners of his mouth hitched up.

And he was gone.

xxx

Clarke had been at college for three weeks now and she had exactly one friend. And she hadn't even made that friend at college, so it was technically cheating. And maybe getting her Russia and Contemporary Euro thesis from the laundry room mystery man was cheating too, but she had gotten an A- on that and so be it.

"Hey! Are you studying to be the next Rhodes Scholar? Get out there," Raven's voice was clear and insistent even when traveling through her headphones. She smacked Clarke on the leg with a rolled up E&amp;S magazine.

Clarke ripped out her headphones. "Go where?"

"The hallway, the common room, the convenient store. Just out." Raven was manhandling her up out of her bed now and yanking her to her feet.

"But it's a weeknight," Clarke protested weakly.

"You really have no idea how college works yet, do you?" Raven's voice softened slightly and her eyes were wide with pity and understanding. Clarke almost breathed a sigh of relief, but then she was being pushed back and whirled around, her bearings lost on her temporarily until she came to a stop outside of her dorm room door, which she heard latch and click with a resounding lock.

Clarke pounded on the door. "Raven!"

"Nope. You can't come back in. Go! Be Free!"

Clarke slumped against the drywall opposite their door. She knew better than to think she could get Raven to open the door again until she all but brought back the entire floor to prove she had met people. She couldn't even leave the floor, Raven had her keycard. And she couldn't even text Wells for a few hours, Raven had her phone.

Raven was a sophomore. She knew how this whole first month of college thing went, but she also wasn't very sympathetic to Clarke's fears. It was one of the things Clarke loved about her. Raven was fearless, and some would say she had too much gall. But for some reason Clarke had never been put off by it, or afraid of it, even when Raven came home for winter break to find her boyfriend dating Clarke. They'd had it out and somehow made it to the other side as friends, with nary a Finn to be found.

Clarke began to pad her way, clad just in her sweats, t-shirt and socks, towards her floor's common room. The bottom of her socks were scratchy against the rough commercial carpeting, the kind that's made up of blues and purples and knotted into tight little balls. She'd met a few people already and they were nice enough. It wasn't really that she was scared. It was just that she was too painfully aware that she didn't always give off the best first impression. Take laundry room mystery man. She knew could be…prickly. She also knew she could be seen as superior, and boy was she good at acting like she was too. She'd been the student council type in high school.

She entered the common room and made a beeline for the kitchenette. Their RA kept the cabinet stocked with communal coffee and she desperately needed to find a reason to be walking in there. She practically cringed as it brewed, thinking about the bitter, plastic taste of it. It was fucking cheap coffee.

She peaked around and took in the guys playing GTA5 on the couch, a few girls sitting around with their laptops or textbooks. She recognized some of them. Jasper and Monty and Miller and Harper and Monroe.

"Hey Clarke," Monty called out and she nearly knocked over her coffee.

"Uh, hey." She hoped she sounded friendly.

"Whatchya doing out here?" he asked.

She hoisted herself onto the table no one used properly and crossed her legs. "Oh, you know. I uh, got locked out of my room." She tried to wave it off like it was nothing. Casual. Super nonchalant. It was half true after all.

"Oh damn. That happened to me last week," Jasper said, not looking away from the screen. His player was getting out of his car with a bat so he could beat the guy who made him crash straight into a fire hydrant.

"Cops are coming, dude. You better run, stop beating the old man," Miller urged.

"Okay, okay!" Jasper cried and stole an old woman's station wagon. "Anyway yeah it's a bitch to get in if your roommate's nowhere to be found."

"I said I was sorry," Monty whined.

Clarke smiled into her horrible coffee.

"You've gotta go to the RD. And he is not pleasant," Jasper said.

"Hot though," Harper piped up from behind her laptop.

"Who's hot?" a voice, rich, pleasantly deep, with a confrontational edge bellowed into the room. Clarke recognized it as belonging to Octavia. Octavia was already practically the floor's prom queen.

She had made a big show at orientation and obviously relished being not only the center of attention but the center of everyone's universe. But she wasn't like any of the popular girls Clarke knew, who donned Uggs and North Faces and Marc Jacobs bags with their school uniform and talked about you behind your back. She was the kind of girl who wore ripped jeans tucked into combat boots and a checkered flannel over a lace tank top, thick brown hair piled high on top of her head. Her entire energy was as if she could be chasing butterflies barefoot in the woods one moment and then turn around and be ready to bare knuckle brawl someone the next.

"The RD," Harper answered.

Octavia's nose crinkled. "Ew. Whatever. Are we drinking tonight or what?"

Her question was met with various cheering and hollering from the boys as they quit their game and jumped up from their seats. Harper snapped her laptop closed.

"Hey," Octavia threw a nod across the room towards Clarke.

"Clarke," she helped her out.

"Yeah, Clarke. You comin'?" Octavia asked.

"Where?"

"Thirsty Thursday."

"Oh, uh," Clarke raised her coffee cup to signal her current drink of choice (a lie). "I'm good."

Octavia shrugged. "Suit yourself."

"I will," Clarke shot back. Octavia raised a sharp eyebrow before turning on her heel.

Monroe hung back with Clarke, and when the room emptied it was freakishly quiet and suddenly appeared dank and grungy when moments before she had felt at home for the first time since moving in.

"The RD's room is two floors up at the end of the hall, by the way. He's really not that bad."

xxx

When Raven was actually not there, because Clarke was pretty sure she wouldn't have been able to withstand the relentless pounding-Raven definitely did not have that much patience-Clarke found herself taking the elevator up to the fifth floor. Contrary to popular belief, she thought getting her homework done was actually important.

She knocked on the door and whatever she'd been expecting she definitely hadn't been expecting Mr. Laundry Room Mystery Man himself.

In the flesh. All bright blue henley and messy hair and freckles and sleepy eyes.

Clarke gaped at him for a moment too long so the silence hung in the air and grew weird and tense. "Hi," she finally said, surprised, slightly mockingly.

"Hi," he mimicked back.

Boy, he was surly. And she really didn't like the way his voice sounded like gravel scraping against his throat, apparently all the time and not just in the middle of night in well lit laundry rooms. She absolutely didn't like it, or the way his square set jaw and the shadow his cheekbones cast made his annoyed stance send sharp spikes of electrons or neurons or whatever they were right through her to her fingertips. She had never been great at chemistry.

"You're the RD?" She couldn't help the terrible part of herself, like a nagging feeling in her chest, that made her want to annoy him all the time so he would never stop looking the way he did.

"Who's asking?"

"You're terrible at this," she said and crossed her arms.

A muscle in his jaw jumped when he pursed his lips and crossed his arms too. Was he making fun of her? Clarke wanted to push those buttons all the way up to the top floor, wherever that might lead.

"You went to your RA first?" he asked.

Clarke faltered, her defiance slipping. "No."

He sighed. "You're terrible at this," he said and disappeared somewhere behind the door to grab a ring of clanging keys nearly the size of a hula hoop.

xxx

Clarke missed sleep. She missed her bed and lights that didn't hum in her brain and burn her eyes. Yes, she was back in the laundry room again. Every Wednesday she had some sort of writing assignment due for her Russia and Contemporary Euro class and every Tuesday she'd yet to start before ten at night. This was her life now. She had accepted the awful pattern. Her mother would be so proud of her time management skills.

And then he walked in, like clockwork.

She met his eyes for a nanosecond before darting them back to her computer screen. That was all the acknowledgment she allowed. Clarke's spine grew rigid and her muscles tensed. She felt too self aware, cognizant of every breath that was too loud and every movement she made on top of her counter when her foot fell asleep and she had to readjust. She couldn't drown out every tumble of the washing machine or every smack of his chair legs on the floor. She ducked her head further down, practically face to face with her computer screen.

But she couldn't help but look up when she heard a popping sound, like a latch, and felt a cool rush of air into the room. He'd opened the window, one of those safety windows that opened from the top and tilted inward, and was in the process of lighting a cigarette and blowing the smoke out of the small opening.

Clarke snapped one of her useless books shut. "Seriously?"

"What are you gonna do, tell your RA?" He was regarding her out of the corners of his eyes, his profile towards her as he kept his right side facing the window, forearm resting along the top and the cigarette dangling casually from between two fingers. Wisps of smoke met the open air and twirled into the night.

"Funny."

"I take it you don't want one?" The corners of his mouth ticked up before taking a drag. His cheekbones grew sharper when he did.

"How generous," Clarke said flatly. "But no."

"You're awfully hung up on rules, aren't you?"

"You're awfully not for being the one who's supposed to enforce them," she said, confrontation in her voice.

"Someone has a problem with authority," he said, amusement in his.

They were getting nowhere, and Clarke was absolutely getting nowhere with her paper, though she was secretly thankful for the coarse of liquid hot anger that shot through her veins whenever he spoke. She much preferred it to his silence, which made her feel self-conscious and awkward.

Still, anticipating the pattern falling to place in front of her, she pulled her mouth into a tight-lipped smile and put on her negotiating voice.

"Look, I have a paper due for this class every week. And as I'm sure you've gathered, I'm new at this. This routine's been working out for me."

He narrowed his eyes at her, brow furrowing at her change in tone. His chair legs clicked and he tossed his cigarette outside. "You asking me to change my laundry night on account of you?" he asked with a small scoff.

Clarke was determined not to break like she did during the key fiasco. She stared him down, stony and expectant.

He shook his head. "As much as I'd love to work my schedule around yours," he said sarcastically. "I can't. Only night of the week I don't work nights."

Clarke sighed and rubbed her eyes with her palms. "Fine," she conceded and hoisted her laptop back onto her lap.

"Well, seems we're at an impasse."

"Seems so," she said, clipped.

"All right," he said and stood up. "Since neither of us is willing to pack up our territorial Tuesday night flags and go home, might as well get to know the enemy, right?"

"Excuse me?"

"I'm asking you your name."

"Didn't seem like it." She didn't look up.

He was hovering, suddenly very near. Near enough to be looking down at her by a few inches. He cast a shadow over her legs and if it weren't so cliche she might have shivered. He sighed, one of those exasperated sighs that come out through the nose like an angry bull.

She smiled under the cover of her hair cascading in front of her face before looking up.

"It's Clarke."

"Well, Clarke. It looks like we're stuck with each other. I'm Bellamy."

_October_

On a Tuesday in October, Clarke turned eighteen. All alone.

Raven was in a six hour lab that if she would fail if she ever skipped and she had left behind a box of cupcakes, balloons, and a stuffed gorilla, Clarke's favorite. Still, she felt the deep pit of emptiness carve itself out in her stomach and with a resigned sigh she began to pack up her things and make her way to the laundry room.

Her door burst open. It was customary to leave your door unlocked if you were somewhere on the floor in the spirit of communal college living and all that. Sometimes she felt like they were all just living in tents and the common room was the central bonfire or watering hole or whatever.

"I can't believe you didn't tell me it was your birthday. Jesus, Clarke."

It was Octavia.

"It's not a big deal," Clarke said dismissively. She had grown to develop an affinity for Octavia after more nights in the common room. She liked her from a distance. Like how Octavia would only ever sit on the couch by hurling her leg over the back and stepping on the cushions. Or how she'd snatch Jasper's pizza right out of his hands and take a bite, but she'd also sit contentedly for hours braiding the other girls' hair in intricate ways and sometimes drew butterflies on her arm.

But Clarke was absolutely not in a place with Octavia where she'd barge into her dorm room and yell at her about birthdays. In truth, she had no idea how to appropriately handle most situations like this.

"Are you kidding? What planet were you born on, of course it's a big deal," Octavia said and plopped down unceremoniously on Clarke's bed. She started flipping through one of Raven's S&amp;E magazines that had ended up there. "So what's the plan?"

"No plan. Just the usual," Clarke said, hugging her laptop to her chest and itching to hide away in the laundry room.

Octavia popped up as fast as she had plopped down. "Uh-uh. Come on, we're going out," she said and manhandled Clarke's laptop from her hands and promptly replaced it with her own hands, dragging Clarke like a petulant child out the door. "You can raid my closet. I seriously doubt you have anything to wear."

So that was how Clarke ended up at a bar on her eighteenth birthday with Octavia Blake and most of the third floor, wearing a skin tight black dress with pointy metal studs along the collar and down one arm and a "Birthday Girl" tiara on her head. She didn't have a fake ID but Octavia insisted it wouldn't matter since she was with her. Sure enough, she knew the bouncer.

"Making a show of it at the bar on your brother's night off? You lookin' for trouble, Octavia?"

"You know it," she said and ruffled the guy's hair before stalking inside, hand still wrapped tightly around Clarke's.

It turned out Octavia was a pretty fantastic friend. Clarke had expected her to use her birthday as an excuse to party and revolve herself around it in every way possible, but Octavia was entirely focused on Clarke. She hopped up onto the pipe that ran below the bar so she could lean half of her body over it and demand drinks, which she paid for. She made sure everyone who hadn't met Clarke met Clarke. She reached down into Clarke's shell and yanked her out of it, cheering as she drank another birthday cake shot and twirling her around on the dance floor so she'd feel less self-conscious.

When they walked back to campus Clarke's cheeks were warm and her toes were cold. She felt like buzzing. Her ears were still ringing and everything sounded muffled in the absence of the loud music that had poured into her body for the past several hours.

Soon, what felt like floating came back down and the fresh air and the quiet walk home brought back the empty pit that had been there earlier. She looked around. Octavia had her arms around Atom's waist, his jacket hanging around her like a costume. Jasper was trying to point out the constellations in the sky to impress some other girl in the absence of Octavia's attention on him. Clarke wrapped her arms around themselves, suddenly cold.

By the time they were in the elevator, her world was spinning. Literally. But as Clarke Griffin was wont to do, she couldn't stomach admitting she was drunk, let alone admitting she was wasted. She hugged a sleepy Octavia weakly and urged everyone to get going, she'd be fine. And thank you so much. Best birthday ever. Really.

And it was. Which was why she couldn't understand why she felt like crying.

Clarke lived to the left of the elevator at the end of the hall, where most of the sophomores were nestled. Most of her new friends lived on the other end, so she found herself setting on her long journey towards her bed all alone. She thought she was moving in a straight line when the floor suddenly pitched up and to the side and she knocked straight into the wall. Soon she was on a ship and it was rocking violently in stormy waters and she had to sit down. Right. Now.

xxx

"Clarke?"

She opened her eyes. They were heavy, like velvet curtains. She winced at the light they let in.

"What are you doing in here?" It was Bellamy, crouching over her, looking more concerned than annoyed. Why? She looked around.

She was in the laundry room. Sitting on the floor. In Octavia's dress. Wearing a plastic tiara.

She pushed herself up so she was sitting up straight, back against a running machine. It was warm and bumpy and comforting. Her eyes began to settle and lose some of their glaze. She knew this because she could see the freckles splashed across his nose.

Clarke sighed a loud, affected sigh and pointed bemusedly to her tiara. "I'm apparently an adult now."

Bellamy dipped his head but she caught his smile anyway. "Partied like one too."

"Mmhm," she hummed through her lips.

"Then why so sad, Princess?"

Her brow furrowed at the name and he nodded to her tiara.

"You don't know me very well, so take me at my word when I say I'm a realist, okay?"

"Okay," he said soberly.

"Super pragmatic."

"Sure."

"But I couldn't help but hope for some fucking magic on my eighteenth birthday. Like…someone surprise me. Point me out constellations or throw your stupid jacket over my shoulders or kiss me just because it's my birthday and everybody's seen all of the John Hughes movies. They should know by now." She was rambling and the words were rounder and blended together in her mouth but they were real, dammit, and she hated herself for them.

"Look," he shifted his weight onto his other foot and rested an elbow on a knee as if about to impart some adult wisdom. "Bright side is you probably won't remember feeling this shitty in the morning. Because you'll feel it all in your head. Now come on, let's get you back to your room."

She grimaced and shook her head emphatically. "No. You're wrong and you know why?" Her insistence stopped him in his tracks. He leaned back. "I'm abrasive," she said after a moment, matter of fact.

He looked at her intently. "You are."

"I'm bossy."

"True," he agreed.

"And stubborn."

"Really no argument here. You're a pain in the ass."

"Exactly!" she exclaimed, like they had just agreed on some unpopular opinion, like marshmallow fluff being disgusting. "And God, I'm so blonde when…" She reached out and wrapped one of his messy brown curls around her forefinger. "Everyone around me is so…so…" Clarke lost her train of thought, equally entranced by the moment and horrified at her stupid, stupid impulsivity.

She tore her gaze away from his hair and immediately regretted it because his face had fallen and his lips were parted and she hated that even when horribly drunk she could still feel shame. All of her awareness rushed back into her body and she opened her mouth to say something, anything. But she didn't because he stopped her with a kiss.

His lips on hers, chastely at first, but searching and probing once she relaxed and her lips turned pliant, like clay, under his. Soft and delicate. Slow and sweet. But not sweet like cotton candy. Sweet like chocolate cake. Decadent.

When he pulled away, his fingertips lingered against her jaw and she opened her eyes, slow like a velvet curtain, and she didn't want to get up just yet.

"Happy birthday," he whispered.

xxx

When she settled into her place in the laundry room the next Tuesday she didn't even have a paper to write. But he never showed.


	2. Chapter 2

Sorry it took me so so long to update! Life and writer's block and general slowness got the better of me. xoxo.

* * *

_October_

All of her blood had rushed to her head.

Clarke's feet were climbed up the wall and she lay sideways across her mattress, head dangling over the edge. The world was upside down.

Her fingers thrummed lightly against her stomach. It was Sunday night, and every Sunday night Raven keyed up The Rolling Stones on her built-by-hand sound system and they dimmed the lights, lay upside down on their beds and hung out.

Raven insisted that "Start Me Up" had to play every time she switched the ON button on a new contraption or machine. For good luck.

"It's true," Raven was saying. "I was at Retro Night at The Drop Ship and some kid was actually scrunching his nose and said his reason for not dancing was because it was old music. No shit, have you ever heard of evergreen?"

"Did you ask him if he would have rather been dancing to One Direction?" Clarke asked even though she already knew the answer.

"'Course I did," Raven said with sly smile.

"I bet that shut him up."

"Besides, if the world ended tomorrow and the rest of humankind was holed up in a bunker or in space somewhere, what do you think they'd be taking with them? Fucking Rolling Stones that's what."

Raven rolled over onto her stomach and tried to reach for her mini fridge without moving. When she couldn't she scooted closer, pushing aside the milk and yogurt that hid the beer she kept in back. She came back with two and snapped the caps off with an unceremonious thwap against the corner of the fridge and handed one to Clarke.

"Speaking of The Drop Ship, you should totally come with me sometime. Bet we could get you in without a fake, especially if you're with the mechanical engineering crowd," Raven said and took a swig of her beer.

"I've been. The one on Washington and Main right?"

"You have?" Raven said, a sharp edge creeping into her tone. "When? With who?"

"On my birthday. With-"

But Clarke was interrupted by her door swinging open so forcefully that the knob smacked against the stopper fastened against the wall for precisely that reason. Only one person barged into her room like that these days.

"Who are you?" Raven asked too aggressively.

"Octavia. Who are you?"

"She does this," Clarke said offhandedly to Raven. Octavia shrugged and situated herself on Clarke's bed, back against the wall and feet dangling off the edge. Clarke's exact inverse.

"Raven," Raven said.

"Huh?" Octavia was inspecting Clarke's bookshelf.

"You asked. And I'm Raven."

"Well Raven," Octavia said and reached over Clarke's lap to swipe her untouched beer. She took a swig. "Looks like this is the start of a beautiful friendship," she said, somewhat flippantly.

Raven shot Clarke a glare that could turn men into stone.

xxx

"What's with the Tuesday night laundry ritual without actual laundry?" Raven asked.

"It helps me think." Clarke shoved her things into her bag and maybe she was a little rough on her notebooks, but internalized anger over even being angry in the first place tended to come out in peculiar ways.

"You don't do it for any of your other classes."

Clarke left without another word.

Having the laundry room to herself was exactly what she wanted in the first place, but the room seemed hollowed out, as if with an ice cream scooper, and all that was left in the void was yellow tinged linoleum and cold, painted brick.

Even the sounds were worse. The prick of her ears whenever something clunked inside the electrical or the buzzing of the lights stalled and started again was exhausting her. She wished for the tumbling of his clothes in the machine and that damn clack of his chair on the tile, if only to keep her sane and her ears from searching for some real sound in a room that felt like a vacuum.

And Clarke was absolutely not angry that he had kissed her on her birthday and then disappeared without a trace. No. It was just that she really hated when her routines were shaken up, and she had just gotten into this one. One that she fought to stabilize. Or rather, that she let him stabilize when he wouldn't leave. So to her, it was downright criminal of him to do this to her after wedging himself into her life and her laundry room with such tenacity.

By the time 2am rolled around she had barely even touched her five pager that was due tomorrow. Her eyes burned and she couldn't stop yawning, and just as she was about to call it a night and try and convince herself that she could wake up at eight and finish it by twelve, he walked in.

"Hey." All deep and gravely. Like she remembered. It filled the emptiness in her eardrums.

"You're back," she stated, more bitingly than she thought it'd sound. Her voice just did that.

"Sorry to disappoint."

The machine whirred and the clacking began and the cigarette smoke wafted and the thin pages of his book crinkled. It was calming when it had once been irritating, and Clarke was able to start working.

When Bellamy got up to transfer his clothes to the dryer he brought his cigarette with him, letting it hang between his lips. Clarke side-eyed him and returned to her typing.

"What? No jab tonight?" he said, words softening and blurring around the cigarette.

"All out of energy rations for the local laundry room irritant, sorry."

"Maybe next week," he said softer than usual, so that Clarke lost her train of thought and looked up at him. And then they just hung there, too long for any two people to stare without saying anything.

The room turned hazy and Clarke blinked. "Can you…" she gestured to his cigarette in his hand, emitting strings of grey smoke into the room. Bellamy started and rushed towards the window and threw it out before taking up his regular seat in the orange chair by the window.

Clarke figured she got in about five hundred words before he spoke again.

"What's this week's paper on?" he asked.

"Ousting of Khrushchev. What are you always reading?" Clarke didn't look up, typed through her words.

"The Iliad," he said. "Tragic night in the laundry room it seems."

She scoffed. "Hardly."

"What's your angle, then? Brezhnev was so much more influential? Or are you writing another book report?"

Clarke exhaled sharply through her nostrils, as her lips were too tightly pursed to let any breath out. She stopped typing and turned his way. "Are you about to argue the Greek tragedy of Nikita Khrushchev with me? Really?"

Bellamy snapped his book shut and leaned forward. "Absolutely."

"It's late."

"A peasant boy from Ukraine who rose to the ranks of General, navigated safely through the Stalin waters and then ended what Stalin had perverted? Passionate. Emotional-"

"He still purged for Stalin. He still sent people to the gulags."

He shrugged. "People do what they have to do, Clarke."

"And threatened to bury us…"

_"Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will dig you in."_

"Excuse me?" Clarke balked.

"That's what he actually said. Marx once wrote: _The proletariat is the undertaker of capitalism_." The timer on the drier dinged and Bellamy stood up, but didn't start loading his clothes into his basket. Instead he just lingered there, as if he were someplace else, some other time, placing himself there and in someone else's body and soul.

"He just believed," he said with melancholy eyes and defeat in his voice. "In the ideal. Look at the thanks he got."

He fell silent then, and loaded his laundry without another word. He didn't look at her, but her eyes stayed trained on him as he worked. She felt like an intruder looking through a glass-paned window to the inside of something she didn't earn the right to see. They shared nothing personal between them, and yet it was unequivocally personal, the way he revealed his passions.

When his clothes were stuffed into his laundry bag and he was headed out the door, Clarke couldn't let him go just yet.

"You were right, by the way," she said and he stopped. "My birthday. Don't remember a thing."

When he turned his lips had parted and were hanging open, slightly shocked, slightly quizzical. It took him a long moment to put together her oxymoron, under the protective way she chose to bring it up. By not bringing it up at all. By erasing its existence.

He soon picked his face back up along with the pieces she was giving him and expertly recovered into a sly smile. "Told you, Princess."

That fucking tiara.

xxx

Clarke watched the sun come up as she read the assigned chapters in her textbooks over again. As she read about Nikita Khrushchev, as if for the first time. She had new things to look for now. Where she had previously seen nothing but power hungry political leaders using a nation as their playground for power and control, she now saw conviction. Where she had seen the end of a man's reign as dates separated by a dash, she saw beyond that 1964 on the page. She read of a meager pension, eviction, depression. Deliberate narrowing and erasure from the world he once led as if once in a small enough corner he might just disappear entirely.

What does the ex-premier do in his retirement, his grandson was asked once. "Grandfather cries."

She felt awakened and deeply somber all at once. Never before, in her stuffy, private school, top-notch education, had she been taught to see anything in history in such a human way. Certainly not from the perspective of such subjectivity. She found herself seeing grey for the first time. She wanted to paint with it, smear the black and white all together and see what would happen.

She printed out two copies of her paper and handed one in. The other she took back to the dorm with her after class and up to fifth floor.

She had titled it "Khrushchev: A Greek Tragedy" but on this copy added a a wedge in between the A and G so it was aptly renamed "Khrushchev: A Fucking Greek Tragedy."

She slid it under Bellamy's door, echoes of history ringing in her ears.

xxx

_I'm old and tired. Let them cope by themselves. I've done the main thing. Could anyone have dreamed of telling Stalin that he didn't suit us anymore and suggesting he retire? Not even a wet spot would have remained where we had been standing. Now everything is different. The fear is gone, and we can talk as equals. That's my contribution. I won't put up a fight. - Nikita Khrushchev._

xxx

"Come on, it'll be fun." Clarke slid her tray along the counter and shuffled sideways a few feet. She and Raven were getting breakfast in the dining hall.

"Have you hit your head on something hard recently? Maybe there was a sharp corner involved?"

"I'm serious! Break it out," Clarke nudged Raven's shoulder with her own and wiggled her eyebrows. "I know you have it here."

"Oh, really? How?"

Clarke shrugged. "I snooped, found it in the back of your closet."

"Screw you, Clarke."

Clarke grinned. "One chocolate chip waffle please," she said to the cook behind the counter.

Raven had only ever been one thing for Halloween. An astronaut. She had a real suit and everything. It was kind of greying and tattered and she wouldn't tell a soul where she had come across it. But every year she suited up in that thing and glared at anyone who looked at her funny.

"Nice space suit," Octavia said in that too intense way that made her sound sarcastic when she was really being genuine.

Raven even held a helmet under her arm. "Nice wings," she said.

Octavia shimmied so her wings flapped. "I'm a sexy fairy."

"I gathered," Raven said flatly.

"When in Rome, right?" Octavia said and held up a shot glass to toast. "Clarke. What the hell are you?"

Clarke was a cat burglar, which she thought was clever and recognizable enough. Or so she'd thought. She wore a black and white striped shirt with a pair of Raven's tiny black yoga shorts, striped knee high socks and Mary Jane's. She rounded the costume our with a burglar mask over her eyes and cat ears on her head.

By the time they got to the house party she was already exhausted. No one else was being asked over and over what they were. It was just obvious. Jasper and Monty had on matching Breaking Bad hazmat suits and baggies of blue rock candy, which Jasper passed out to every pretty girl they passed on the street. Miller was Ferris Bueller, complete with the jacket and everything.

The party was some grad students' according to Octavia, and was at an old, rundown house on the west side of town where college students could rent houses for practically nothing. And Clarke could tell. There she stood, in an unfinished basement lit only by exposed lightbulbs that revealed the cobwebs in every corner of the wooden rafters. It had the damp chill that old basements tended to have, but smelled like sweat and cigarettes and beer.

Having pushed and shoved their way effectively to the front of the keg line together, Clarke, Raven and Octavia slowly drifted. Soon she'd lost sight of Octavia, but caught glimpses of Raven's helmet reflecting light off of it. Clarke downed another beer just to be able to handle talking to guy after guy who asked her what she was. The worst ones were the ones who still looked at her quizzically even after she uttered the dreaded phrase - cat burglar - for the thousandth time that night. She'd stopped bothering to explain further, and just rolled her eyes and turned on her heel to walk away, fantasies of pouring her flat beer onto the guy's stupid head whirling around her brain, when she collided with someone near the stairs.

"Watch it," she said and was eye level with the lean, hard chest she'd just run into. Her beer sloshed onto her wrist and she brought it to her lips to suck up some of the excess before it dripped everywhere. She found herself face to face with a shirt that read "Es tu Brute" in red, as if painted with blood.

She looked up. It was Bellamy.

His hands were up in mock surrender, a bottle of beer in one. He was grinning, taking her in. She assumed she was a sight for sore eyes, but he was wearing a golden Roman laurel crown on top of his mop of curls and was absolutely not a sight for sore eyes. At all.

Clarke crossed her arms. "Let me guess. You're Julius Caesar every year?"

She hated Halloween.

"Guilty as charged," he said. "Let me guess-"

"Please don't," Clarke grimaced and brought her cup to her lips, but it was knocked out of her hand when a guy, stumbling and erratic, barreled right into her.

Clarke gasped when she felt the cool, fuzzy beer seep into the front of her shirt and smelled the stench of it, stale and warm, on the guy's breath. He was hanging onto her shoulders to hold himself up, but before she could lift her knee to his crotch Bellamy had taken hold of his jacket, pulled him off of her and pinned him against the stairwell.

"I think the lady deserves an apology," Bellamy ground out. His brow was heavy over his eyes and cast dark, menacing shadows over them and across his cheekbones. Clarke stared, dumbstruck.

"It was an accident," the guy said defensively.

At his voice Clarke blinked and jolted back to the current speed of things. She recognized his voice and almost laughed. He lived on her floor, and was the resident tyrant as she knew him.

"Bellamy," she urged and tugged at his shoulder. He turned and met her gaze with searing intensity, locking in. "It's fine. It's just Murphy. And he's a dick."

"Gee, thanks," Murphy said sarcastically, but neither of them were paying any attention.

"Let's get out of here," Bellamy said, his voice hoarse. He loosened his balled fist from Murphy's jacket and led Clarke towards the stairs with a hand on the small of her back.

They were halfway up the steps when Clarke stalled. "Wait." She turned and Bellamy nearly ran into her. She grabbed the beer from his hand and peered over the railing before tipping it over and pouring the remainder of its contents square on Murphy's head. His _Fuck!_ was drowned out by her hurried footsteps up the rest of the way, Bellamy at her heels.

They were heaving short, heavy breaths when he backed up flush against the basement door and fumbled for the lock. The sudden shift in light and sound made her pupils shrink and her hearing muffle.

"You owe me a beer," Bellamy said and pushed himself off against the door, weaving his way through a crowd of people. She wasn't sure why she followed. "Is this your usual M.O. or is the cat burglar costume inspiring mischief?"

"Half a beer," she said once they got to the kitchen, which was outfitted with blue and white parquet linoleum and chipped paint on the corners of the drawers that didn't slide too well anymore. "I owe you half a beer."

She could see him falter when she ignored his question and smiled to herself while he rummaged around for a bottle opener.

"All right then," he said and brought the newly fizzing bottle to his lips. "All's fair."

He handed it to her to take the next sip. _In love and war._ She did. After a few times passing it back and forth she hopped up onto the kitchen counter, dangling her feet and knocking the heels of her Mary Jane's against the battered cupboard door.

"What are you doing out here, anyway?" he said. Small talk didn't look good on him.

"Trying my hand at talking to strangers," she quipped, deadpan.

"That's dangerous you know."

"Well I do scale buildings to pull off elaborate jewelry heists."

"I see. So you're the dangerous one."

He had drawn closer, nearly nestled in between her dangling legs, a palm planted by her hip on the counter. She looked down at it, finding grains of salt and pepper ghosted along the off-white tile. Clarke's breath hitched in her throat and she struggled to keep it even as she let it out and sucked it back in.

"What are you doing here, isn't this illegal or something for you?"

"I'm a grad student-"

"Don't," she interrupted him with a hand on his chest. He looked down at it.

"I can be a stranger," he said, voice thick as if coated in honey. But it wasn't sweet.

His hand left the counter and found its way atop her thigh. He was some kind of wonderful at following her lead.

"I don't even know your last name," she said.

"I only know your birthday," he offered. But they both knew he knew a lot more than that.

"Good." She traced the sharp edges of the gold leaves atop his head.

He tipped the lip of the beer bottle that hung between them towards her lips. She took a sip.

"I never want your number." Her fingers danced along the soft ridges at the collar of his t-shirt.

"Good," he said and traced the outline of her mask with his pointer finger.

The bottle fell out of sight.

"Clarke? There you are! Some asshole locked the basement door. I had to go around." She always heard Octavia before she saw her, it seemed, and it took some time to snap out of her reverie and focus. But Bellamy had gotten there first.

"Octavia?" his voice was urgent and strained.

"Great," Octavia groaned and threw back the last of her drink.

Clarke's stomach carved itself a pit right behind her navel and tried to swallow itself. She jolted away from Bellamy, whose torso was still brushing her knee, and got herself off of the dreaded counter and back on her two feet. She could not go through this again.

"Octavia-" she started.

"What the hell are you doing here, O?" Bellamy said.

"I'm here with my friends." She threw a hand up and gestured towards Clarke. "And in case you didn't notice, I go to school in this podunk town just like you."

"I hadn't actually, since you've been avoiding me for weeks."

"I really should go," Clarke said, like bugs were crawling under her skin.

"Good. Take her with you," Bellamy said. His resolute tone, cold and mean, made her turn.

"Excuse me?" Confrontation and that familiar burn of anger, acidic and venomous, pumped through her veins.

Octavia pulled on Clarke's sleeve. "Come on, Clarke. We'll go back to the freshman basement, get another beer and I'll explain."

"Like hell you will," Bellamy said, his jaw set and square. "You're leaving. Now. Here's cab money." He fished a hand into the back pocket of his jeans, once black but now faded a charcoal grey, and held out a crumbled wad of bills at Octavia.

"I don't have to follow to your fascist rules anymore, Bell," Octavia bit out viciously. "Let's go, Clarke." She pulled on her arm now and Clarke stumbled, following a determined Octavia.

"She's my sister," Bellamy called after her and Clarke stalled for a brief moment, able to catch his eye and hold it. "Some stranger, huh."

And then Octavia pulled her into the crowd.

* * *

Stay put! Chapter 3 is imminent! I split this chapter to keep a consistent length, so I have it all written except for the final scene. Should be up asap!


	3. Chapter 3

_November_

They did leave the party soon after, the keg was almost out and the boys grew even sloppier, so they split a cab with Raven and Monty. Octavia's level of drunk had bottomed out and she pressed her forehead to the glass pane of the window and looked out at the passing street lamps, which threw streaking patches of deep orange or purple or red into the cab in the dark. Clarke did the same in the front seat.

They were quiet, strangely melancholy.

"So," Octavia said finally. "You and my brother?"

Clarke sighed, fogging up a portion of the window. "Not really. He's kind of a dick."

Octavia let out a breathy laugh at that and Clarke felt the muscles in her jaw relax a little.

"Who the hell is your brother?" Raven asked.

Octavia threw her a sidelong glance and then looked to Clarke.

"The RD," Clarke said.

"The one and only Bellamy Blake," Octavia added with a scowl.

"Seducing authority. Badass," Monty chimed in and they all stared. He shrugged.

Raven laughed and Clarke groaned.

xxx

Over the course of the next week Clarke learned a lot about Bellamy and Octavia Blake. She learned that Octavia had been home schooled her entire life, while Bellamy had gone to a military prep school on scholarship somewhere outside of Philadelphia. And that they didn't think they had the same father, but their mother would never talk about any man in her life. That Octavia never had any friends except for her brother, and since their mom was always working two, sometimes three jobs, Bellamy had risen to the occasion, become the man man of the house and had essentially raised Octavia.

She told Clarke how he'd taught her how to tie her shoes, learned to make her favorite dinner (lasagna) when he was twelve, and been the one that sat on the other side of the bathroom door she had locked when she got her period for the first time and told her everything was going to be okay. And she had never liked regular bedtime stories, so he read her mythology every night before she went to sleep.

When their mom had died suddenly before Octavia's senior year of high school, Bellamy became her legal guardian and she moved down south and lived with him in his tiny one bedroom apartment he'd had off campus. He deferred his first year of grad school-he had a BA in History and was going for his MA in Classics-and worked full time, helped with her homeschooling.

"I'd missed him so much, Clarke. You have no idea. But then he just smothered me."

Clarke noticed Octavia had a habit of chewing on the ends of her pen caps. "And now?" she asked, enthralled by the tale. Clarke's ankles were crossed and dangled in the air. Taking notes from her biology book had fallen to the wayside as she lay on Octavia's rug, hand woven and hand dyed by her mom.

Bellamy had given up his apartment and brokered a deal with the financial aid office to get free housing as the Resident Director of the 100 Jefferson building. He was putting them both through school, Octavia knew, but she couldn't help but hate that they no longer had a home other than the dorm. And when she was placed in the same building, she tried to distance herself at all costs from her brother. To the point where she didn't want any of her new friends he existed, let alone was their RD.

"Maybe I'm ungrateful, but I can't take it anymore. I need to be my own person. I need to explore things."

"You're supposed to be a whole new person when you walk in that door," Clarke said, turning inward.

"Exactly. It's a whole new world," Octavia said.

"Funny how the past follows you around." Clarke looked down at her nails, picking at them.

xxx

No longer a stranger, no longer an apparition that appeared only in laundry rooms, Bellamy Blake started showing up all over campus.

She saw him mornings in the dining hall, reading the newspaper with a cup of black coffee a buttered toast.

She saw him after class, down the hall from her stupid Russia and Contemporary Euro class. (She had gotten an A on that Khrushchev paper).

Once, she stood frozen in the hallway and let backpacks of rushing students push by her and shove her back and forth all because he was standing with an older man and hunching over some piece of paper with such concentration that his shoulders hunched up around his neck. Clarke got lost in it, that moment of stolen candidness, until he swept his gaze up and glanced down the hall. Their eyes locked, even through the heads of students in their sightline, until Clarke broke away and rounded around the corridor and down the stairwell until she hit fresh air.

She saw him in the courtyard, among the changing leaves. She could see him in Octavia, in the way she sat in a chair or said the word _really_ or crossed her arms. But especially in her eyes.

She couldn't escape him.

By the time Tuesday rolled around and he did too, Clarke was sick of him.

They went about the familiar routine-machine whirling, window cracked, chair tapping-in silence.

"You should really stop being an idiot," Clarke said casually after about an hour or so. She kept her eyes on her computer, typing fluidly.

"Come again," he said, barely a question.

"Why don't you do your laundry on your floor? You've been trying to keep an eye on her, haven't you?"

"That's none of your business." Bellamy wouldn't meet her eye, even now that she was boring holes into him.

"I care about Octavia, so I'm making it my business."

"You're a pain in my goddamn side, you know that?"

"Yeah well, you too." She hopped off the counter.

She was actually finished her three pager, save for the editing, so she started packing up her books and snapped her laptop shut. She slung her bag over her shoulder.

"She doin' okay?" he called after her. His voice was hoarse and raspy.

Clarke stopped in the doorway and turned. "Yeah," she said softly. "She's doing great."

xxx

The college was bustling as everyone rushed and buzzed to close it down and get out of town for five days. Dry leaves, brown and red and orange and yellow, crunched and crackled under frantic boots. Somewhere a distant bonfire was blazing and sending the burnt, autumn smell through the Commons. Clarke, Raven and Octavia had laid out an old flannel blanket someone had left in their common room and chose to remain still amidst the commotion across campus.

"When are you guys heading out?" Octavia asked as she sectioned off pieces of Clarke's hair in preparation for a french braid.

"Not," Raven said.

"No way. Why?"

Raven pointed to herself. "Orphan. And Clarke hates her mom so she's pretending she is too."

Octavia's eyes all but lit up. "You are? I'm an orphan too. I mean, I never knew who my dad even was. He could be alive, but who the hell knows."

"Really?" Raven said in mock excitement. "Let's like, totally start an orphan club! Clarke, you can be an honorary member." Her sarcasm dripped from her tone so strongly that Octavia accidentally yanked on Clarke's hair.

"Funny," she said coldly.

"I thought so," Raven said flippantly.

Clarke tuned them out. She wasn't entirely sure how their trio of abrasive, slightly tone deaf personalities came together in the first place. But Raven and Octavia tolerated each other at best, yet were never outright hostile. She could maybe write a user manual on how to be flippant by now, though.

Regardless of and despite the dysfunction, something kept them together. For a vain moment Clarke couldn't help but consider if it was her. She picked at a little yellow weed flower in the grass that was poking out from the edge of the blanket and methodically ripped the petals off.

Octavia grabbed the second one from her before she could start shredding it and wove it into her braid.

"Guys," Clarke said. "I have a really bad idea."

xxx

Three days later when Bellamy answered a knock on his door and found himself face to face with Clarke, Raven, and Octavia, there was definitely no going back on the plan. The really terrible, horrible, bad plan.

"Hi," she said cheerily. Raven and Octavia flanked her on either side. Octavia held two bags of groceries, and Raven two jugs of Carlo Rossi wine.

"This is Raven, my roommate. Don't piss her off, she can build bombs. And I believe you know your sister, Octavia?" Clarke brushed passed him and stalked right into his tiny apartment.

"What is this?" Bellamy asked, dumbfounded, as the girls followed Clarke and took over the space.

"Thanksgiving, dummy," Raven said as she passed by him.

"It was Clarke's idea," Octavia said, more subdued than usual, her shoulders shrugged up by her ears and hands in pockets.

"Was it now?" Bellamy said, trying to mask his confused panic with a bemused, slightly put off tone.

Clarke stalked over to the far wall that was home to the small kitchen, just a fridge, oven and burner combo, cupboards and sink all in a row. She fiddled with the knobs of the oven. "You're the only person we know with a full working kitchen."

Raven unscrewed the first bottle of Rossi and started pouring. "Octavia said she wouldn't come unless there was an abundance of alcohol," she explained over her shoulder to Bellamy as she doled out full cups to everyone. He took his reluctantly, had to uncross his arms and everything.

Bellamy's apartment was only just the size of two small dorm rooms, the one wall housing the little kitchen, next to it a door that led to a bathroom, and another that might be a closet. The rest of the rectangular room was furnished with a small table and four chairs near the kitchen, and a couch and coffee table in the middle that acted as a room divider from the bed that was shoved in the corner. It was spare, but lived in.

Clarke opened the oven door and peered inside.

"You're crazy if you think a turkey can fit in that thing," Bellamy said.

"Good thing we're not having turkey," Clarke said.

"We're not?" Octavia said after a big gulp of her wine. "What was even in those bags? They weighed a ton."

"Lasagna," Clarke said and started unloading the groceries onto the counter. She caught the knowing glance between Bellamy and Octavia before they each looked bashfully away. Bellamy cleared his throat and got up from his seat.

"Here. Let me help," he said.

"Not needed, thanks," Clarke said. She was inspecting the recipe, which she had scribbled on a piece of yellow notebook paper. "I got it."

"Not likely if you need to read a recipe," Bellamy groused.

Clarke sighed and shoved the piece of paper into his chest and let go. It was for him to catch then. "Fine. You can dictate the recipe, but I'm doing the cooking."

"Whatever you say, Princess."

"What is going on? I'm so confused by this dynamic" Raven whispered to Octavia.

"No idea. Let's just drink," Octavia said and they clinked cups.

xxx

By the time dinner was served, they were one full jug of Carlo Rossi down and Clarke had two burns from the oven, one of which she blamed on Bellamy. In turn, Bellamy was on shirt number two after Clarke had turned with her cup in her hand and smacked right into him as he was attempting to add more cracked pepper to the filling.

"Wait," Clarke cried out when all three of them lurched towards the steaming pan of lasagna. They all froze. "We have to say what we're thankful for." Everyone moaned. "We do!" Clarke insisted.

"Hold on," Raven said and topped off everyone's wine. "Ok." She held up her cup. "I'm thankful for guys who can pull off mustaches, and that you and I ditched Finn Collins and upgraded to a far better model, each other."

Clarke smiled a bashful smile, one that made her eyelashes flutter and her cheeks grow rosy. "I'd choose you first," she said and they clinked cups.

"I'd choose you first, baby girl," Raven said back.

"Who's Finn Collins?" Bellamy asked.

"Not important," Clarke brushed him off and looked to Octavia. "Octavia?"

Octavia glowered. "I guess I'm thankful for finally having friends."

Raven nudged her shoulder with her own and gave a teasing _awww. _

"Even if it's you," Octavia added.

Clarke nodded at Bellamy to go next. He shifted in his seat and looked down. "Never really been thankful for anything other than my sister. So. There you go. Clarke…" he passed the bill off to her as fast as he could and knocked back the rest of his wine.

"Um," Clarke faltered. "Thankful that Bellamy has a kitchen and we're not eating fritos for Thanksgiving."

"That all?" Bellamy tilted towards her and said under his breath, just for her.

"Bravo," Raven cheered and wielded the spatula. "Let's eat!"

Clarke was largely quiet throughout the meal, having nothing to contribute as Raven, Octavia and Bellamy swapped holiday horror stories. Stories of canned turkey casserole that tasted like cat food and cranberries that burned and congealed into the sauce pan when Raven's mom passed out drunk before dinner was even served. And of Octavia and Bellamy working together to run off their mom's new trucker boyfriend who had insisted on cooking the meal but ended up bringing fried chicken and beer for Thanksgiving.

Clarke knew she couldn't relate. It wasn't as if her holidays were without strife, but she also knew well enough that her experiences weren't the same and she didn't want to share stories of whispered arguing behind the serving doors of the dining room or the tears that spilled on her family's fine China. She certainly didn't know how to spin them into something to laugh about.

"Why so quiet over there?" Bellamy finally caught on and pulled her in to the conversation.

She felt like a fish with a line caught in her. "No reason. Just uh, not a very good story teller."

"Come on, every family has at least one holiday that went to shit," Bellamy urged.

"Something like that. But really, trust me. It's uninteresting." Clarke's clipped, diplomatic voice had turned on. She couldn't help it.

Bellamy leaned back in his chair, sizing her up. "I see. Poor little rich girl."

"Bellamy," Octavia warned.

"Let me guess. You have a family in some big old creaky house waiting for you to outgrow your rebellious slumming phase and come on home to inherit the family silver."

"It's not like that," Clarke bit back.

"But you have a family? Have a home somewhere else?" he pushed.

"Yeah," she said softly.

"Then what are you doing here, Clarke? Pretending like you have no one just like the rest of us. Meddling in other people's business to avoid your own."

"Hey, back off," Raven said.

"You know _nothing_ about me," Clarke said, dark and low.

"Oh, but I do, Princess."

"I'm gonna be sick," Octavia mumbled and pushed her chair back, its feet scraping and whining along the floor. She ran towards the bathroom. Sounds of retching followed.

"O?" Bellamy pushed back his chair to get up.

Clarke threw her napkin on the table and started after Octavia. "I got this."

She joined Octavia on the cold tile next to the toilet and held her hair back, rubbed her back, and spoke soft reassurances that it was just wine and it would be all right.

"You have piss poor social skills, you know that right?" she heard Raven say through the half open door.

"Like the Romans," Octavia murmured.

"What is?"

"Vomitorium. Totally normal."

Clarke laughed to herself. "You Blakes and your ancient history."

"Huh?

"Nothing."

"He's gonna hate me," Octavia said, resting her cheek against the seat.

"Not possible," Clarke whispered and tucked a loose strand of hair behind Octavia's ear. "He loves you more than anything. He's just an ass."

"Hey." Bellamy's voice was soft and tentative as he stood in the doorframe. He handed over a glass of water, which Clarke took and brought to Octavia's lips. "How is she?"

"Fine. Drunk," Clarke said.

"Raven's on dishes. She said she'd relieve you in a few," he said curtly.

"Ok," Clarke said.

Octavia puked agan.

xxx

When Clarke pulled herself onto her feet they burned with pins and needles and her vision whirled slightly at the sudden movement.

"Hey babe," Raven said to Octavia as she took Clarke's place.

"I'm dumb," Octavia mumbled.

"No argument there," Raven said.

The rest of his apartment was dark and cozy compared to the bright white of his bathroom, and Clarke felt a rush of exhaustion sweep through her. He was sitting at the table, seat still pushed back and his legs sprawled wide, elbows on knees. She flopped back into her chair and held her head up with her hand.

"How you doing?" he said.

"Fine. Drunk," she said.

"You were good with her in there," he said.

They both stared into their drinks, swirling the deep red table wine around, contemplating what to do with it. With any of it.

"My mom is a doctor," Clarke said, breaking the tired silence that had settled in. "She works for the Health Department in D.C. My Dad worked for a lobbying firm, mostly on renewable energy, climate change, alternative transportation, things like that. He wanted to do good."

Clarke glanced up at Bellamy and found him staring at her intently. She licked her lips. "One day he got wind of a new pharmaceutical push and it did something to him. It horrified him. He was asked to work on it and refused. Not only that, he started to steal the documents, leaving the house late at night with a briefcase. He was going to leak. So my mom, she um…she called his boss and our family friend. She told him everything. And the next day my dad was locked out of his building, his personal items left on the curb. They had people come to our house and overturn everything. They dumped my drawers out on the floor."

She sucked in a breath and noticed him lean forward in quiet trepidation.

"A week later a semi T-boned his car while he was on his way to a job interview and he was killed. The driver wasn't even a licensed trucker and was wanted for skipping bail for murder in Ohio. Turns out he has a mom who mysteriously ended up with a new house a few months later."

"Clarke," Bellamy said.

"Point is…You don't know me, Bellamy," she said and wiped a tear from her cheek. "So yeah," she said and her voice broke. "I'm thankful to be with people that didn't have a hand in my dad's death."

When he reached for her hand she told herself she was too tired to shake it off as she wrapped her fingers around his.

_December_

In the two weeks leading up to winter break, Clarke avoided the laundry room. She didn't mean to exactly, but she had never experienced college finals before and was putting herself through the initiation ritual. It involved studying on the floors of the dorm hallway, and it definitely involved finding a secluded corner of the library and spreading all ten books out around you so you could research as you wrote. The uniform: sweatpants at all times. The diet: coffee and donuts and pizza.

Almost everyone was packed and gone by now, but Clarke had a 10am Biology final on Friday, the last scheduled. She checked.

Her flashcards were sprawled out on the floor of the common room, her back against the base of the couch. Its lacquered wooden frame jutted into her back uncomfortably and there was a kink in her spine but at least it was keeping her awake. It was two in the morning and the floor was like a ghost town. She didn't hear the usual slamming doors or muffled music through the walls or the faint smell of weed.

Thirty-one pairs of nerve roots in the spine. Twelve pairs of cranial nerves. The medulla, cerebellum, cerebrum, pons. Thalamus. Hypothalamus. There were so many pairs of nerves. And so many thalami, so many ums.

"Hey." Bellamy materialized in the doorway of the common room. Clarke started and hoped it was only her insides that jumped. "You seen Octavia?"

She flipped over the flashcard in her hand and cursed under her breath. "She's out with Atom. It's his last night and since he's not coming back next semester-"

"Damn shame," Bellamy said sarcastically.

She let an amused breath pass through her teeth with a slight whistle. "Typical."

"I like to be consistent," he said, the closest to lighthearted she'd ever seen him. "What about you, shouldn't you be headin' out soon?"

Clarke held up her stack of flashcards. "Bio 101 owns me until 1pm tomorrow."

His eyebrows spiked up and the corners of his lips turned down as if to convey a _yikes_ at the mere idea of Biology. She didn't blame him.

"Want some coffee?" he asked and awkwardly stepped into the room, his movements clunky. He scratched the back of his head. "Since I'm down here I might as well steal some of the free stuff."

"Sure," Clarke said, skepticism rising like an unwanted tide in her voice.

His back to her, she watched him intently as he went through the motions of readying the pot. Lining the filter, measuring out the grinds, filling the water. Every now and then his shoulder blades would poke out and she could see the way they moved, like gears, under his thin grey shirt. She thought of biology, the kind that was made up of lean muscles and tan skin and freckles, and she quickly turned back to her cards and the endocrine system.

"Cream and sugar?" he asked some minutes later.

She hummed an _mhm_ without looking up and continued to snap the cards down on the ground after flipping them over to check the definition. Soon a non-styrofoam, actual ceramic mug full of light caramel colored coffee was stuck in front of her face.

Bellamy took up a seat next to her on the floor, feet flat on the rug, his knees sticking up and out. He held his much darker coffee by the top of the mug with just a thumb and forefinger.

"You should study out loud. Helps retain information better."

She stared at him, blank and bemused.

"Well, since you asked so nicely," he said facetiously and snatched her cards from the floor.

She shot out her arm to reach them but he held them high and out of reach. "I don't need a study buddy, Bellamy. Or a tutor. Or a-"

He cocked an eyebrow. "You through? We're wasting precious time."

Clarke ceded with a scowl and hid it behind the wide bowl of her coffee mug. "Don't you have finals?"

"All written. Nothing to do but worry about dear old sis." He smacked the deck of cards against her thigh. "Come on. Distract me."

She made a show of rolling her eyes dramatically so they hit the back of her head and kind of gave her a headache. "Fine. Go."

"The pituitary gland contains what two parts?" he read off of the first card.

"Anterior and posterior lobes," she said.

"Medical terms?"

She groaned. "Uh...one is the neurohypophysis and the other is…A-something-hypophysis."

"Adenohypophysis," he said. "What two hormones does the thyroid gland produce?"

"Thyroxine and calcitonin."

"And what do they regulate?"

"Are you curious?" Clarke said.

"No," he drawled out. "You have their functions listed here. Figured it mattered."

She threw her head back so it bounced against the couch cushion and stared at the popcorn ceiling. "Thyroxine regulates metabolism. Calcitonin regulates calcium levels."

"Good," he said and moved on to the adrenal glands.

Sometime in between the circulatory and respiratory systems he started to lose his voice. It grew scratchier than usual, like sand coated the walls of his throat. The sound of it was lulling her into a half awake reverie, and she answered the card prompts dreamily with her cheek to the burlap like cushion of the couch.

Bellamy grew frustrated when he stumbled over the word adrenocorticotropic three or so times. "This is really a freshman pre-req?"

"No," Clarke said. "Just for pre-med majors."

Bellamy looked at her for a long time without saying anything, just studying, or maybe unmasking her layers until he found her endocrine system. It made her shiver.

"What?" she finally said, somewhat defensively.

"Nothing it's just…you don't seem very…clinical."

"I don't?" It was maybe the nicest thing he had said to her. She thought nearly everyone saw her as clinical, in the sense of the word that meant efficient, unemotional, coldly detached. And she knew he didn't mean it in the observation of patients sense of the word, either.

"No," he said in almost a whisper.

Her mouth ran dry, her lips parched. She stared at his, like they were a mirage that could quench her thirst. "How do I seem to you?" she whispered.

"Stirring."

The ends of his hair were wild across his forehead and dusting the tops of his eyelashes. She scooted closer to him. "Stirring?" she repeated, not so much for clarification, but to try the word on for size.

"And…" He swallowed, which made the muscle at the corner of his jaw flex and pop along his cheekbone. Clarke nearly reached out and touched it.

"And?"

His eyes had never looked more black and endless.

"Galvanizing," he said finally.

And their lips came together like searing, like an electric current was running through them, from her lips to his, and from his to hers so as to try and restart the long stilled expanding and contracting of the heart.

His hand cupped around her ear and fingers laced into her hair before he slipped his tongue into her mouth and she moaned into it before joining him in the duel.

Soon he was tugging her towards him and she was swinging a leg over his and straddling his lap.

He kissed like he spoke, gruff yet oddly fluid and poetic.

Hands gripped her hips, grounded her in place, then teased at the hem of her shirt before snaking up and along her spine. The pads of his fingertips pressed against her ribcage and she rolled her hips reflexively, eliciting a low growl from deep within his throat that reverberated against her lips. The second time she rolled her hips against him she did it intentionally, and gasped when the rough denim fabric of his bulging jeans scraped against her and sent a white hot charge through her nerves. A warm rush of wetness rushed through her and pooled at her center, begging for more friction.

He tore away from her lips and she whimpered, but he was trailing kisses along her jaw and down her neck, where he found a pressure point to exploit with the use of his tongue. Clarke tangled her hands into his hair to hold on while his hand palmed her breast from underneath her shirt.

"Wait," she said, breathless. "What are we doing?"

"Studying biology," he answered in her ear.

_Fuck._ There she was, having the hottest makeout of her life with the goddamn resident director of her building and her new best friend's brother and grinding herself through her sweatpants against his hard on. On the floor of the common room. At 4am. Before her last final of the semester.

She found his lips again and crushed hers against them. "You're distracting," she said when she came back up for air.

"So are you," he said and kissed her again.

"No." she broke away. "You have to go."

"I don't know how," he said against her lips, his breaths ragged and uneven.

"You just…walk away," she said breathily.

"You first," he said.

And technically speaking, she had to, since she was sitting on top of him and all.

When they peeled themselves apart Clarke felt cold, but not at all clinical.

* * *

Thank you for all of your lovely reviews, comments, and general excitement for this little thing! Keep it up and I will too!


	4. Chapter 4

I'm floored by the response this little guy has gotten on here! Thank you all so much. Keep it up, it fuels me like a literal choochoo train.

* * *

_January_

"Is that a new shirt?" Octavia was looking at her upside down. Once Clarke had told her it was her prime music listening position Octavia had insisted on copying her. They were on Octavia's bed, but Clarke had righted herself after the blood that rushed to her head made her too woozy.

"Hm?" Oh…Yeah. My mom got it for me for Christmas."

"Shit it's been like eighty-four years since we've seen each other," Octavia said.

"It feels like it, doesn't it?" Clarke was in a dreamy state, somewhere between the cords of the music playing. Where space and time were tangible. Maybe it was the music. Octavia's choice retro album was The Who's _Tommy_. So different from the hard, rhythmic rock of Raven's Rolling Stones, Tommy was lyrical and transformative. It let her mind wander, towards thoughts and ideas and hopes and wishes she'd rather not let swell in her chest.

She had been back in the dorm for about two hours before knocking on Octavia's door. She and Raven had grown sick of each other over the past month, and then there was the Finn run in. And Wells. And Clarke really needed to be around people that didn't know her from back home. Raven had practically thrown her duffel on her bed and ran, and Clarke couldn't stand to look at the unceremoniously unpacked suitcase.

Octavia's room felt like home. It was adorned with deep jewel tones and textures everywhere. The woven rug over the brittle carpet, a hand knit blanket, beads and sheer scarves draped over lamps in order to diffuse the glow of the lightbulb. Posters like papier mache covering every inch of the wall. It was a good thing Octavia's roommate practically lived with her boyfriend off campus.

"Hey," Octavia's voice poked a hole in her fog. She lifted her head from over the side of the bed and rested her cheek across Clarke's knees.

Clarke's eyes were closed and she was moving her head back and forth in tune to the music. It was a particularly psychedelic guitar solo with some other sounds she couldn't pinpoint. There really wasn't a musical bone in her body. When it was winding down she peeled her eyes open to look down at O, eyes hooded.

(Okay, so maybe once the door shut behind her Octavia had whipped out a crinkled joint from her jeans pocket, grinning from ear to ear that she had swiped it from Bellamy's secret-but-not-so-secret-after-all hidden stash).

"Yeah?" Clarke's tongue was thick and dry and she had trouble rounding it to make out the right words. Everything in her legs tingled.

"I missed you," Octavia said, like it was hard for her to get through her teeth.

Even harder for Clarke, she responded with a knowing nod and a closed lipped smile, but she hoped the well of emotion pooling in her pores would somehow excrete through her widened, foggy eyes.

Beyond them, somewhere in the distance, _Tommy_ played on.

xxx

Clarke's second semester schedule was a nightmare. She was taking her second pre-med required seminar and organic chemistry, which she was dreading with stoic panic. She had to meet a foreign language requirement for pre-med too, so she signed up for Latin and hoped for the best. That left her with one real elective, which had been Evolutionary Philosophy, but which was now Intro to Drawing. That happened after a particularly heated fight with her mom the day after Christmas.

By Tuesday night she had nothing but equations swimming in her brain. At least her first Latin class would be all letters, no numbers. She was about to have something of a paperless semester, but sometimes she just missed good old regular English Lit. She glanced at the clock on her desk.

"Have somewhere to be?" Raven asked from her bed.

Clarke whipped her head around. "No. Why?"

"You've been tapping your foot against your desk for thirty minutes. Driving me crazy."

"You know what?" Clarke snapped her laptop shut and got up, heading for the door. "Fine."

Raven didn't call after her, and by the time she had stalked halfway down the hallway she realized she'd forgotten her homework, which she couldn't do on her computer. But hell if she would deign to go back in there so soon, Raven would love it too much.

Clarke spent most of the night hanging out with the boys in the common room. When her computer died they let her take a stab at playing GTA5. Miller was begrudgingly respectful, while Jasper was more wide-eyed in wonderment at her ruthlessness. Just here to get the job done, she told him. Brutal, Monty added in admiration.

It was one in the morning by the time the guys decided to call it a night and not so mysteriously shuffled into Monty and Jasper's room to smoke weed. So Clarke found herself tracing her fingertips along the walls and zig zagging lazily down the hallway. Her shoulders felt lighter and bouncier than they had been. An entire month of tensing them had left sharp knots in her back that she couldn't have imagined being a badass and gaining the respect and awe of her floor mates in a game of Grand Theft Auto would have cured.

Feeling trouble free and weightless, she didn't want to go back to her room just yet, so she took the sharp left U-turn into the laundry room and hoisted herself up on the familiar counter, swinging her legs lightly as they dangled. She took in the small room, same as ever, and waited.

When he walked into the room he stalled at the sight of her. "Hey," he said gruffly before recovering and making his way over to the furthest machine from her.

"Hi," she said flatly, though her feet were still swinging.

He looked up from throwing his clothes into the washer and his eyes flicked to her closed laptop by her side, the way her gaze was trained on him unabashedly. She was studying him as she lay in wait, and felt strangely confident about it. She should pull a gun on fictional enemies in video games more often.

"You got a paper to write?" he asked.

She let the silence linger. "No," she said plainly but couldn't stop the corner of her mouth from ticking up, so she bit her lip to try and stop herself from smiling outright

Bellamy stilled, the flurry of his laundry routine slowing and finally falling to the wayside. "What are you doing in here then?" He was closing the space between them, inch by inch.

"Well you know," she started, but he was in front of her now, and his palms planted themselves on either side of her, nearly touching her own. "The laundry room helps me focus."

Clarke's gaze was transfixed on his right hand and how his thumb could just reach out and brush her finger. And when he did, it was almost too much and she looked away, right into his eyes. So close to her own, and so easy to mistake for black unless you looked hard enough to find the deep brown of them, hiding within the shadow of his long, sweeping lashes.

"How's your focus now?" he asked, his hands gliding up her arms.

"Crumbling," she said.

"Good. And your break?" He asked distractedly. He was more intent on tracing tiny circles along her denim covered knee.

She thought about the last month at home. The tension, terse conversations, uncomfortable run-ins, maddening arguments. And then she thought about how many nights she'd lain awake, staring at her ceiling, imagining Bellamy's bare back, sharp shoulder blades and all, just out of view. She'd sweep her fingers along her stomach and tell herself it was his hair tickling her skin as his lips traveled up her ribs and through the ravine between her breasts.

Her heart began to beat in quick one two steps against her ribs. "Frustrating," she practically sighed, then practically yipped when he yanked her knees apart and settled his hips in-between her legs.

God he was hot. Literally hot. In the way where his heat conducted through her and under her skin, igniting her from within so that she felt like she might spontaneously combust. It was basic science, really.

"And yours?" she asked as her fingers latched onto the hem of his shirt and played with the fabric.

"Boring."

"Is that so?" she egged on, lips hovering just over his.

"Excruciating," he added.

She relaxed into him then, allowing his lips to sweep over hers, like a deep exhale a long time coming. She felt him getting lost in her lips, and she pulled away.

"What?" he said, nearly breathless already, forehead rested against hers.

"Not sure I got what you meant. Maybe you should come up with more words to help me along."

"How about," he rumbled against her lips before moving along to her jaw and towards her ear. "Agonizing." The syllables vibrated and she shuddered. "Tedious." He kissed a patch of skin behind her ear that she was pretty sure had never been touched before. "Unendurable."

She hummed in response and her hand found the back of his head and held him to her, buried in her neck and whispering luscious words into her flesh. Her thighs tightened themselves around his hips. She wasn't planning on letting him go.

"Words sound good on you," she said.

"I'm very good with my mouth," he said and she could feel the smirk against her collarbone.

She pulled on his hair to get him back to look at her. His pupils were dilated, wide and wild beneath his hooded lids, heavy with hunger. Clarke felt the push and pull. He pushed, she pulled. Quite literally. She wanted to push back, like playing in a sandbox.

She lifted her chin, haughty and defiant. "Show me," she dared him.

"Don't think I won't."

"I do think you won't," she said and before she could land the last word it was sent flying, high-pitched and into the air, as Bellamy lifted her up and swung her around, legs wrapped tightly around his waist. In a flurry of movement he kicked the stopper out from under the perpetually open laundry room door and it swung shut with a heavy slam.

His next kiss was suffocating in the kind of crushing way that sucked all of the oxygen from her heart and she felt deflated. But she didn't mind. She'd give him all of her oxygen if he kept kissing her like that.

Soon she was being set on top of the washing machine in which his clothes were tumbling away, oblivious. The machine shook and vibrated under her. When he broke away from her lips to fumble with the button of her jeans and started to pull them off she realized all at once that she was losing the battle of the sandbox and that there was no turning back now. All she could do was surrender. So she lifted herself up off off the top of the machine and let him peel off her jeans and pull off her shoes.

When she landed back on the white metal it was cold against her bare cheeks and she hissed in a quick breath. And another when Bellamy's hand snaked around her calf and his lips found the inside of her knee with a sensual grace she didn't know a man could possess.

His lips trailed up her inner thigh until he reached the soft triangle of her thong and traced his thumb along the fabric. It was already damp, and the charge it sent through to her core sent a rush of fresh arousal through her.

"Last chance to opt out, Princess," he said, raspy and tight, trying to keep his controlled and collected upper hand in his voice.

His middle finger snuck behind the fabric of her underwear and stroked delicately in between her slick folds and she swallowed her answer, shaking her head vehemently.

"What was that?" he asked, goading.

Clarke had to lick to her lips to get them to work again. "No," she said, hoarse.

She was pretty sure he snapped the thin string of elastic that held the black cotton to her because within seconds her underwear was gone and his tongue took over where his finger left off.

So maybe Clarke was a little surprised at how fast she unraveled at his mercy, legs spread and knees hooked over his shoulders on top of a washing machine at two in the morning. How she kept finding herself in such precariously sinful positions in public places with her RD, she didn't know. What she did know was that she had one hand tangled in his hair and one along the back lip of the washer, holding herself in place as he lapped and explored every inch of her.

Her low, guttural moans and mewls turned into a sharp gasp when he finally descended upon her clit, which had been pulsing and jumping for attention.

His tongue swirled around it in circles. "Like this?"

He gazed up at her, lips parted and disheveled hair falling in his eyes. Clarke murmured a mmm-mmm and shook her head. The corner of his mouth twitched up and he gave the slightest of nods before dipping his head back down. This time he flicked his tongue against her clit, up and down and up and down, and the familiar flood gates opened and let loose a surge of hot molten lava within her.

"Oh God," she cried out and he picked up the pace, inserted a finger and hooked it up to apply pressure against her sensitive inner walls. Clarke's hips bucked and she strangled a cry in her throat, trying to stay quiet. Her eyes were trained on the door, which had a small glass paned square window in the middle. And which had no lock on it. Yet the thought of someone being able to walk in on them at any moment, how exposed she was, only added to the mounting pressure behind that tiny bundle of nerves that Bellamy had at his mercy.

"I've wanted you like this," he said and looked up to catch sight of her as he added another finger and pumped in and out. Her mouth fell open and she felt her cheeks flush and her eyes flutter closed. "Just like this." And he dipped his head back to down to lap at her.

When she came it was sudden, not like climbing a cliff and falling over the edge, but all at once and with a shudder and a cry she couldn't contain. He kissed her hip bone, and along her torso until her shirt stopped him from traveling up her lips by way of that ravine between her breasts she so badly wanted him to explore. His bottom lip scraped along her sternum and she threw her head back. His hand snaked around to cup the back of her head as that bottom lip skidded along her neck and rounded her chin. He kissed her then, languorous and deep, and she could taste herself on his lips.

"Welcome back," he said.

"Warm welcome."

Whatever Clarke had expected when she crossed the threshold into the laundry room earlier that night...it wasn't that.

xxx

The door to her room creaked open and tapped against her shoe, but she didn't even flinch. Clarke was laying on the ground, looking straight up at the popcorn ceiling.

Raven sighed loudly and made her way to her bed by stepping in between the mess of legs and arms and books she encountered, and still Clarke didn't move.

"Alright." She threw her backpack on her bed. "Spit it out."

"I can't," Clarke sighed.

"Why not?"

"Because we don't talk about guys."

It was true. It wasn't written down in a friendship rulebook or anything but it had just kind of fallen into place. After you date the same guy and then become friends, it was awkward to discuss romantic interests to say the least. Clarke picked up on things here and there. She knew Raven had a crush on a grad student, even if Raven didn't yet know it herself. And she knew Raven had a few one night stands under her belt that she racked up trying to prove she could have meaningless sex. It didn't really work out.

But they didn't talk about it.

"Well," Raven slid down onto the floor and sat cross-legged by Clarke's head. "Seeing as I can practically hear the anxiety screaming behind your stone cold exterior, maybe we make an exception."

She flicked her eyes backwards to glance at Raven, who was looking down at her intently, with more patience Clarke had seen in her for a month.

"I keep encountering this guy. Have been since practically the start of the year. And now it's like there's this entire world that's built up over months and no one knows about it. But it keeps happening."

"Sounds hot," Raven said.

Clarke's tight lips cracked a brief smile. "I think now we might be putting ourselves in each other's way. It's kind of fucked up."

"Fucked up how? Like he's in to weird shit?"

"I don't know. Like we hate…hated each other. And he's kind of a dick but he's deep. And I can see that he's deep and-"

Raven groaned dramatically and swatted at her. "Dammit, Clarke. Where's the dirt?"

Clarke flipped over onto her stomach so she could look at her. "I was going to say…and I saw him last night for the first time since before break. And things went from a single hot makeout in December to him throwing me on top of a washing machine and going down on me. While anyone could have walked in."

Raven's mouth fell open, amusement and shock too great to be held in apparently. "Did you get off on it?"

"Oh my God," Clarke grumbled and buried her face in her hands, mortified. "Yeah. Definitely, yeah."

"Okay, so you have a public places kink, who cares? It'll help loosen you up, bring that inner rebel bad girl out to play like I know she wants to."

"I don't even have his number. For a while I didn't even know who he really was. But it's like I have a magnet in me. I don't know if he has a magnet in him but he must because then it's like…" Clarke held her hands out a few inches from each other and wavered them, miming the resistance in the magnetic field before locking in to one another and crashing together.

"Beautiful metaphor," Raven said sarcastically, then whacked Clarke on top of her head with a pillow she'd pulled down from her bed. Clarke made an umph sound. "Now snap out of it, you're being emo."

"I am not being emo," Clarke said.

Raven held out her hand and popped out a thumb. "A: Biology. His parts like your parts and your parts like his parts. Boom! Hot laundry room encounters." She held out her pointer finger. "B: Psychology. You think he's deep." She couldn't help drawing out the last word in a teasing, sing-sing tone. Then a third finger shot into the air. "C: Chemistry. You have it, based on your magnet re-enactment a second ago. Or maybe that's physics."

"Shouldn't you know that?"

"Shouldn't you know basic physiology and get that you so clearly want to bone this guy six ways to Sunday for maybe a prolonged but undeterminable amount of time?"

Clarke reached out for the pillow and buried her face in it to groan again. A minute of quiet silence passed and the energy of the conversation slowly sank.

"Who is it, Clarke?" Raven asked, but with a lower, quieter voice. It was soft and anticipatory. Like she had picked up that it was the last piece of the puzzle that has sent Clarke to the floor of their narrow little room to stare at the ceiling before her first Latin class.

She picked herself back up and onto her elbows and sank her chin into her hands. "Bellamy Blake," she mumbled.

Raven's eyes went wide, registering shock and a healthy dose of giddiness. "Tell me everything."

xxx

The smack of crisp, cold air at her face as she walked to class helped the heaviness in her head evaporate and be replaced with cool, clear lightness. Telling Raven had helped too. Raven and the cold, fresh air for some reason made her feel less like she was being pulled along in a riptide of random, entropic collisions and more like she could find her footing and construct some sort of design for collision, head on.

Her mind skipped excitedly, from the the way his hands, slightly rough, rubbed up and down her arms to the top button of his t-shirt that was always open and letting one half of the little V flap over and reveal the edge of his collarbone. Finally, her mind settled on his door, and how she'd knock on it and ask for help with Latin with a demure nibble of her bottom lip. Entrapment maybe, but she remembered the dark blue of his bedsheets from Thanksgiving and she wanted to wrap herself up in them.

Clarke filed into the lecture hall still diligently running imaginary picture shows in her head, so caught up in them that she kept her eyes trained on her toes just to make sure she didn't trip over a step. She wasn't sure why Latin, of all damn things, was huge enough at this school to warrant a hundred and fifty seat class, so she tucked into an end seat in the third row and didn't plan on making friends.

The commotion of students spilling in and choosing seats and talking and shuffling and creaking open their desks that were tucked and folded against the sides of the seats was all background noise to her.

I'm very good with my hands she would say, and trace every line of his body, finding all the pressure points until his head rolled back and his Adam's apple popped and she'd have her way with him. They'd get lost in those sheets. Those blue sheets.

"…and I'll be your Professor for Latin 101. Welcome, all."

Clarke finally floated back into the present and caught the nasal, clipped tone of her Professor. She began to doodle along the sides of her notebook where the holes were that held the rings. It was a habit from high school that she hadn't yet broken.

"This is an accelerated course, which will consist of twice weekly lectures that will teach you the basic mechanics of the language. You will be expected to continue your learning on your own, in study groups, and take any questions or concerns to Mr. Blake, your T.A."

Clarke's head snapped up instantly. There he was, sitting off to the side and staring straight at her. His lips were parted and his face had a look like falling, all slack-jawed and malleable. Hers still registered shock, while his was resignation, and she couldn't quite get him to talk back to her with his eyes. She tried, and widened hers, sending her brows up, but he pulled his muscles tight once again and clenched his jaw before looking away from her.

"He will be responsible for grading all of your work, so consider him as you would any Professor here."

Clarke's face fell a moment later.

* * *

tbc!


	5. Chapter 5

_February_

Clarke took to running the perimeter of campus each morning and sometimes in the afternoon because when the cold winter air whipped at her nose and dried out her lips she felt better. Because she missed him like burning.

It was stupid, she told herself, to miss someone you hardly knew or got the chance to know. She could count their interactions on ten fingers but that was part of it, that it wasn't enough.

But still at night she ached in the dark. Flat on her back and staring at the ceiling, it was a searing, melancholic ache that soon crept into her days, too.

Octavia noticed it, too.

"What's up with you, Clarke?" They were out at a Junior's off-campus apartment party and Clarke couldn't wait to find the nearest corner to sulk in.

"I'm fine. The music sucks," she said and sipped her drink.

"Bull. You're glaring at everyone who talks to you like you'll kill 'em," Octavia said.

Raven took the opportunity to turn away from her conversation behind the couch and lean over it. "That's just Clarke. Serious is her middle name."

"It's Abigail, but whatever," Clarke grumbled.

Raven patted her on the head. "That's my girl."

Octavia narrowed her eyes at Raven. "Of course she's always serious, that's like her thing. But that never stopped her from being fun before."

"Okay, I'm right here, guys," Clarke said from her place on the plaid couch. It was actually disgusting and she didn't know why she was sitting on it. She made to get up, feeling a little sullied, and dusted herself off.

"She's up!" Octavia nearly cheered. "Mission accomplished. Now, if you'll excuse me, I dared Jasper and Monty to a shotgunning contest."

"Kill 'em, babe!" Raven called out as Octavia walked away, throwing them a look that said _you know I will. _

Clarke noticed Raven loitering, still hunched over the back of the stupid plaid couch. "What?"

"You gotta tell her at some point," Raven said.

Clarke downed her drink in one fell swoop and grimaced from the burning. "Tell her what?" she said bitterly.

Really, though, tell Octavia what? That she'd actually met her brother before she'd met her. That when Octavia had walked in on them in that yellow kitchen on Halloween he had already kissed her. That when she had been sick in the bathroom from too much cheap wine on Thanksgiving Bellamy was in the next room, holding Clarke's hand in his own and stroking that slope between her thumb and forefinger with the pad of his thumb.

Or how about tell her about how Clarke had run after Bellamy that day of her first Latin class, found him along the brick walkway behind the Humanities building. How she called his name. How he flinched when she tugged at the sleeve of his jacket, which made her step back. How hard his features looked then, how closed off, as if on lockdown.

"What?" He was looking past her, at the top of her head and beyond.

Clarke opened her mouth but nothing came out. She shook her head in lieu of words that didn't need to be said. "I just…"

The look on her face must have given her away. She wasn't saying but what about us. She wasn't saying where does this leave us, before we even begin. She wasn't saying let's do it anyway.

But maybe she was.

"You what?" he said, like jabbing. "Want to add another moral quandary to the mix? Because we've racked up quite the list so far."

"Hey," she jabbed him with her pointer finger, hard, in the chest. "You don't get to do that. I'm not the one that started this, _you _did. Doing whatever the hell you wanted and throwing rules to the wind. You want to evoke them now? Fine. Then do it."

She held firm like that, with her mouth tight and her eyes wide but steely, even as he looked down at her with enough mixture of anger and despair than she could take. "Yeah, I am," he said finally.

"Say it," she demanded.

He stepped back and put his hands up, part surrender and part good riddance. "Walking away from this. Right now." And she watched him stalk off.

Yeah, maybe she should tell Octavia that. Along with your brother ate me out on top of a washing machine and then turned out to be my TA so we're now acting like it never happened.

She hadn't returned to the laundry room and wagered he hadn't either. She wondered if his clothes were dirty, or if he snuck them in just when dawn was breaking. Maybe he just went to his own damn floor.

All necessary interactions between them became perfunctory. She turned her declensions and conjugations in at his desk swiftly and didn't look up when her translations landed coolly on her desk, marked in red with his handwriting all over them. She flipped them over and tended not to look at them again.

Maybe she could tell Octavia about her current C- in Latin. And why.

Her insides were feeling the familiar churn of dark and stormy coupled with sourness from her flat beer. Jasper was telling an animated story about the time he, Monty and friends went on a camping trip and accidentally ate psychedelic berries.

"I need some air," she said abruptly and left the conversation.

Once outside, she inhaled full and exhaled hard. The air always helped her. It helped give her patience, clear her mind, center her orbit and generally helped her continue to have friends. She didn't think she could ever live in space, or underground, where air was controlled and recycled and artificial. She needed it to bloom within her.

She leaned back along the wood siding of the apartment building and steadied herself with the sole of her foot up against it. She dangled her red cup at her side and inhaled again, closing her eyes, and stilling when the screen door squealed open and then slammed back shut.

Clarke looked to her left. His head was down and he was trying to block the wind with his hands so he could light a cigarette. She threw back the rest of her drink (that was becoming a thing lately) and set the empty cup down on the concrete steps by her side so she could reach for her phone in her pocket. She caught him glance her way before she trained her eyes down towards her screen.

"Great," she said, bemused. She typed furiously.

_Clarke: what the hell is your brother doing here_

"Hello to you too," he said through the filter of his cigarette. It finally caught light. Her phone vibrated.

_Octavia: do i look like my brothers keeper_

_Octavia: he's friends with Miller apparently_

_Octavia: tell him he's a loser for me_

_Octavia: where r u ?_

Bellamy settled in next to her and she silenced her phone, tucking it away in her jeans.

"Don't you have friends your own age?" Clarke said.

He took a long drag and puffed it out through his nose. "Not many," he said.

"I actually came out here to be alone."

"Yeah. Me too." But he made no effort to move.

Clarke let the back of her head fall against the rough siding and just stared up at the stars. She could see them better here than in D.C. and wished she knew how to recognize the constellations. Bellamy smoked his cigarette and they stood there, side by side and in the cold night air. In silence.

Some minutes later he finished his cigarette and stubbed it out under his boot. He looked up at the stars with her.

"I can't stop thinking about you," he said slowly, quietly.

Every muscle in her body tensed. She felt too self aware of her body, and suddenly had no idea what to do with her arms. She stood there, rendered dumb and motionless, eyes trained to the sky. She tried to find the furthest star she could and will herself there.

He turned to face her, his shoulder holding him up sideways now against the siding. He was closer now, she could feel him. "Do you think about me?"

She dropped her head to look to her toes. His fingers ghosted along the strands of hair that fell in her face and tucked them back.

"No," she whispered; she lied.

"What don't you think about, then?" he urged. There was something strained and needing in his voice.

She looked at him then. His eyelids were heavy and his furrowed brows caused them to fall over his eyes and gives them a desperate, drooping quality. "Bellamy," she started but didn't know where to stop.

"I want to touch you." It was delicate, fragile, like wishing on a star. Her breath caught in her throat and went back down, filling her chest with pressure. He smelled like bourbon and cigarettes, spicy and smoky and stale.

"So do it." She leaned in, just centimeters, but enough to hear him swallow, hard. "Let's be strangers."

His hand wove around her ear like a vine into her hair and he dragged his thumb across her lips and continued along her cheek. "You're dangerous. Like nitroglycerin."

The screen door creaked and squealed open again and his hand shot down to his side. "Bell?" Octavia's voice called out, loud and clear. They stepped apart and Clarke whipped around to face her friend.

"Look who I ran into," Clarke said, forced.

"You better be playing nice," Octavia looked over Clarke's head to her brother.

"'Course I am," he said.

She hopped down the concrete steps. "I told him you weren't going anywhere so he better get used to it whether he likes it or not," Octavia said and slung an arm around Bellamy's shoulders. "Don't worry yourself trying to figure him out, Clarke. Bell's simple. He either hates you and you _know_ it or he loves you. There's no halfway with him."

Bellamy was staring right at her from behind Octavia's tipsy rambling. Clarke felt her cheeks run hot and felt the drinks she'd downed earlier at all once.

"You're one to talk, O," he finally said, still with the lasers pointed right at her.

"Hey Bell, can you drive us home? It's fucking freezing out," Octavia said.

Was it? Clarke was burning up under her jacket.

He must have acquiesced because then Octavia was yelling up towards the open window for Raven. "Get down here or we'll leave without you!"

Raven's combat boots clunked heavily down the stairs and soon she was flying out the door. "Okay okay okay…whoa," she stopped when the screen door slammed behind her. "Hey Bellamy." She dragged out the hey dramatically and flung a pointed look at Clarke.

The car was toasty from the blasting heat and mostly quiet. He glanced at her in the rearview mirror more than once and she didn't look away, even when Raven noticed. Later she stood in a cold shower with her hands between her legs and nearly sobbed as she came.

xxx

Now that Bellamy had mostly wised up and stopped being a tyrant of an older brother, she wanted to include him in most things they did. Talk of going ice skating or heading two towns over to apparently the greatest Italian restaurant on the planet or of road tipping down to Florida for Spring Break all included Bellamy. Clarke bit her tongue so she didn't find herself pointing out who seemed overly suffocating now.

It didn't help that whenever he was around he was either actively avoiding looking at her or he was undressing her with eyes. Both drove her mad and when he wouldn't look at her she wished he would, and when he did she'd more often than not find herself rubbing her thighs together to contain the throbbing that rose in between her legs. And in turn wished he'd look away. He never did.

There was no acting normal.

In the larger scheme of things, Bellamy was also somehow becoming ingratiated into the third floor as one of them. To an outsider it must have looked strange, but if anyone questioned it Octavia tended to jump down his throat. "He's my _brother," _she'd spit out. "It's not our fault the dumbass housing office put me in his building."

Miller, Jasper and Monroe soon fell in line, too. They welcomed Bellamy into the common room to play GTA5 and he went ahead and turned them onto chess.

"You're a nerd," Clarke said, leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed, bearing witness to the transformation.

"Care to learn, Princess?" Bellamy asked. She wondered why no one questioned where he picked up the nickname. (That fucking tiara). Maybe they did when she wasn't around.

"Please," she scoffed. "I know how to play," she said over her shoulder as she turned to go.

"Maybe I could teach you a few things," he bellowed so it reached her out in the hallway.

"Not likely," she called back. Though she knew she was bluffing, putting on a big old show. On the exterior she was cold, sly, mostly bitchy. Inwardly, she was cracked marble.

They hadn't been alone together in two weeks, so when her most recent translation slid onto her desk with a big fat F on it and a scribbled "see me during office hours" on it her stomach twisted itself into knots. She didn't know what to expect, how to act, what to say or do or wear. Some pains they were taking to force themselves into a normal student/TA dynamic, when it was already in ruins from the start.

She walked into his office already exhausted. So much trying to be good and normal and erase history. It was draining. And all for what? For Bellamy's awkward throat clearing and paper shuffling that started the second she walked in and sat down? How much different was this from him bending her over his desk and taking her right then and there, she wondered. They still were never going to be just what they were supposed to be. And at least in the latter scenario they'd both be getting something out of it instead of this quiet hell.

"Look, I-" he began. Stopped. Started over. "You're struggling in this class, Clarke."

"I know," she said, an edge of defense settling in on the tip of her tongue.

"Professor Rich recommends students with a C or below meet with me once a week."

"I think we'd both rather let me fail in peace, don't you think?"

"Clarke," he said and his tone was soft, his forced professionalism slipping away. "I know you need three semesters of a language for your degree."

"How would you know that?" she asked, quiet.

"Let me help you."

It was so earnest that she fell silent, strangely transfixed. She rested her elbows on his desk and leaned forward. "Show me what you got."

"All right," he said and pulled out a clean, printed copy of the passage she had failed. "Piece of advice. Before getting into the mechanics of it, think about the story. What's the story the passage is telling? If you know the emotion, the players, the plot, the words and the grammar will come easier."

Clarke rolled her eyes.

"Swear it." He stood up from his chair and turned to the bookshelf, messy and packed. He pulled out an old looking book with a deep blue hardcover and embossed lettering across it. The gold had long worn away. "Remember what the passage was about?" He prompted and sat back down, book in hand.

She shrugged, chin in her hands. "Hercules killing that three-headed dog."

"But from whose point of view? Athena's. Maybe it's really about her. How she helps him navigate the underworld. She's in his ear, his counselor. One of many women behind the man. And the woman behind many great men. She became known as the protectress of heroes." He held out the book across the desk to her. "You should read up on her. Think you'd like her. Then try the translation again."

Clarke looked down at the book like he were handing her a pile of snakes, but she took it and tried not to brush her fingers against his. Once over that obstacle, she reached forward and grabbed the post-it notes and a pen that were laying around unceremoniously on his mess of a desk. She scribbled on it and then slid it across the table to him without saying a word.

_do you still want me_

His perplexity turned to wide-eyed panic, registering in nuanced changes, like ripples, across his features. A tightening of a muscle here, a widening of the eyes there. She threw an impatient look towards the note, urging him to answer. He reached for the pen and slid it back to her when he was finished.

_all the time_

She crumpled the paper up in her hands until it was reduced to a crinkly ball and threw it at him. It hit him square in the shoulder. She tore off another post-it and began to write.

_change your mind about those rules?_

He didn't write a note back. She stood up.

"Seems we're at an impasse," she said coldly.

All he could do was take back words he'd once said to her and look up with those tortured, apologetic eyes and she knew.

"I'm holding up my end, here. I'm respecting your wishes. But Jesus Christ, Bellamy, don't torture me. I'd rather fail."

"Clarke..."

"Thanks for the book," she said as she walked out the door.

xxx

Clarke bunched the big red bag as hard as she could. It budged a little bit, and just swung enough so that Raven had to steady it.

"I mean I'd get you a vibrator but then I'd have to move out. You'd be unstoppable," Raven was rambling.

Clarke crinkled her nose. "Ew." She punched again.

"Tell me your sexual frustration isn't reaching alarming levels. Like extremely unstable chemical components, like-"

"Nitroglycerin," Clarke said and hit the bag so hard Raven actually reeled back.

"Nice."

Raven liked to box and was a regular at the town boxing gym. It was mostly filled with locals who didn't tend to be fans of the college crowd, but Raven swore by it to let off steam and had dragged Clarke with her, insisting she needed to punch her aggression out.

"I can't escape him. He's there in class. He's there at parties. He's in the common room. Octavia's room. In the dining hall. In my ear. _Literally_. Looking at me like I'm macaroni and cheese…"

"That's weird."

Clarke shrugged. She found it more enticing than chocolate cake, was all. "And then to top it all off…" she stopped to practice a one-two punch like Raven had shown her. "He waxes poetic about Athena the Greek goddess and and gives me a book!"

Raven gasped for effect. "What a bastard!" Clarke glared at her. "No but you're right. He should know better. Pulling that kind of crap just dissolves panties all over town."

Clarke glared harder, which was Raven's cue to leave the punching bag, pick up the sparring blocks and take to the mat. She held them out in front of her and let Clarke hit them with abandon.

"I know!" Raven said when Clarke punched herself straight out of breath. "You need to get laid, strictly one-night stand style."

"Oh, good idea!" Octavia's voice popped in from behind them, her usual entrance. "Maybe it'll help remove the stick that's been up your ass lately, Clarke."

"Hi to you, too," Clarke said and popped open her water bottle.

"Where have you been?" Raven asked.

Octavia threw a leg up against the ropes of the ring to stretch out her hamstrings. "Flirting hardcore with the guy at the front desk. He's an instructor here, too."

"You mean Lincoln?" Raven asked.

"That's the one. He said he'd show me some moves on the house." Clarke and Raven let out wispy, tiny scoffs in unison. "What? You two aren't the only ones in desperate need of getting laid. And yes, you _too_, Raven."

xxx

That was the conversation that led to planning the girls night out with the express goal of getting Clarke laid. Bonus points if Raven and Octavia happened upon some male specimens, too.

"Hey," Raven called out to Octavia, who was rummaging through her mess of a closet. "Is your brother working at The Drop Ship tonight?"

"I dunno. Probably," Octavia said from behind a curtain of dresses. She came back out with a pile of fabric balled up and sequined and blew a strand of hair out of her face. "Why?"

Raven shot Clarke a look. "No reason. Just wondering."

"I mean he'll probably be a bitch about it but he's trying to get back on my good side so what can he do," Octavia said.

"Right," Clarke said offhandedly. She was twisting pieces of her hair and tying them back with string.

"Oh and Clarke," Octavia said casually. "Try not to get too distracted trying to fuck my brother."

Clarke tripped over her own breath and then coughed. Her eyes widened and she turned around and held onto the dresser for dear life. "What?" she choked out.

Octavia was shimmying a gold sequined skirt up her thighs. "I've walked in on you guys almost hooking up at parties twice. I'm not an idiot." She pulled on a sheer white tank top that showed her black bra and started working on perfecting the half tucked in, half tucked out look. "Just saying. He's kind of an emotional nightmare."

Raven laughed out loud.

* * *

_I did it again and wrote so much that what was going to be Chapter 5 is now split in two! So Chapter 6 is hella imminent, just have to write one last scene for it! You guys have been seriously the best, so much so that I've been a writing fiend this week. I'm giving everyone who's reviewed or clicked a fave or follow button credit for that. You've got me going! _


	6. Chapter 6

_I'm blown away by the response, still. I'll probably never stop being blown away. You guys have been unreal. Hope you enjoy this chapter!_

* * *

Retro night at The Drop Ship was by far the best night at the bar, or so claimed Raven. The fact that Octavia actually agreed with her made Clarke inclined to believe them. Not only was the music fantastic, but only the good seeds came out to play. It was perfect for weeding, Raven said. The third Saturday of every month.

Clarke couldn't help but dress for the occasion. She wasn't able to pull off the Octavia look, casual and sexy with her loose tank and combat boots spruced up with a sequin skirt. And she wasn't able to pull off the Raven look, sleek and sultry in a skin-tight black dress but a little bit punk with chunky rubber heels and industrial brass necklaces draped around her neck.

What Clarke could pull off was a printed dress with capped sleeves and a scooped neck the accentuated her cleavage as the fabric pulled and stretched along her chest and a tight seam cinched in at the waist. Then it extended in to a delicate skirt with an uneven hem that hit high on her thighs. It was teasingly short, and if she twirled it would certainly allow a quick flash of her nude pink underwear. She paired it with wedges and weaved flowers into her hair from a mysterious bouquet in Octavia's room.

She was ready. (And already two shots in).

The atmosphere was immediately different than her birthday. The music changed the entire space, its twang of guitar strings and its doo wop beats and its high-pitched vocals made the wood that covered every inch of the bar appear deeper and shinier. The lighting was more orange and the air didn't smell like vodka and beer, it smelled like bourbon and gin.

Octavia grabbed her hand and she grabbed Raven's so they could navigate through the crowd together. Destination: bar. Clarke couldn't help herself from shaking her shoulders back and forth as _Dream Lover_ played. Raven was already nodding her head to the staccato parts of the lyrics.

Octavia shoved her way successfully to the bar and was hoisting herself up on the pipe that ran along the bottom again so that she could stand taller than the others (or just as tall in some cases).

"Hey, Bell!" she hollered. He was all the way at the other end of the bar, pulling bottles of beer out of the freezer and hooking them under the bar to pop open the caps. He glanced over his shoulder towards Octavia and flicked his chin up to acknowledge that he'd heard her. Clarke noticed the sharp edge of cheekbones form his profile, and how his hair fell into his eyes even more than usual, which gave him a dark, alluring presence.

She was tucked behind Octavia and a big, burly guy and she didn't think he could see her. So she just watched intently until he was in front of them. "What are you doing here, O?" he said and whipped a cloth out and proceeded to aggressively wipe down the space in front of them.

"Retro girls night," O said and shrugged. That was when his eyes flicked to Raven and then on to her and locked in, hardened. He lingered, and she held his gaze until he was forced to drop his head and clear his throat.

She felt triumphant. Maybe it was the flower crown.

"Only beer," Bellamy said.

"No way," Raven piped up. "It's Retro night, do you want us to look like plebes!"

Octavia broke out into a lopsided smile. "That's right. Class us up, Bell." And she slapped her palm on the bar.

His eyes darted to her once more and she just raised an eyebrow.

He sighed, his resolve slipping. "Come on, O. You know the rules."

The burly man finally backed away into the crowd and Clarke stepped up onto the pipe and leaned over the bar, very aware of the fact that her crossed arms were pushing up her breasts and accentuating her already generous cleavage in her dress.

"I'll have an old fashioned," she said, low and drawling. He splayed his palms out on the bar and his shoulders climbed up his neck. His biceps bulged. It was as delicious as his agitation. "Doesn't the saying go…if you can't break one rule, break another?"

"I don't think that's a saying," Raven mused to her left and she was peripherally aware of Octavia smacking her on the arm to pipe down. They were enjoying the show, which apparently consisted the sexually charged staring contest of the century. Step right up, tickets are free because they were too dumb to charge for a view.

The current song ended and the first chords and lyrics of _Wanderer_ started, changing the mood and disrupting their stillness. Again, he broke first. "It's a slippery slope," he said gloomily.

"Counting on it," she said with a sly smile and leaned back, standing up on the pipe as he huffed away to begin making their drinks.

She hooked her hands around the under lip of the bar and began to sway back and forth, dancing with her shoulders and her torso to the sax solo. Yeah, Retro night was definitely her kind of night. She felt the music in her body and her bones and it was like a reflexive impulse to let it move through her.

When he delivered three (perfectly made, she discovered later) Old Fashioneds to them with a glower, she picked hers up and swiveled around and into the crowd without a word. She only glanced back once she had successfully led Raven and Octavia to the dance floor and yeah, he was staring.

Turned out Clarke was something of an evangelist about the music, much like Raven was when they played 60s and 70s rock for Retro night. She danced with abandon and bullied anyone around her who wasn't doing the same.

And the dress! The dress. She shimmied and swayed and it whirled around just like she'd wanted. She hiked it up even higher on her thigh as she did what she decided was the twist. Maybe it wasn't, but it felt like it. And that definitely caught the attention of a cute guy during _Last Kiss_. And a hot girl during _Little Bitty Pretty One_. All the while she made sure to keep her eye trained towards the bar, so that whenever Bellamy looked up for her she would be there, looking right back.

Eventually she needed a second drink and slipped around to the corner, where the bar wrapped around and attached the wall. It was a hidden spot, not optimal for getting the bartender's attention, but Clarke didn't think that would be an issue.

"How's the view?" she asked coyly when he made his way over to her.

He leaned in close, halfway over the bar. "What are you doin', Clarke?"

She shrugged. "Playing the field. Dancing."

He returned with her drink and stalked away before she was finished paying for it, and she plucked out a flower from her hair and left it on top of the ten dollar bill before bumping her way through bodies to get back towards Raven and Octavia.

"Remember, operation getting laid does _not_ mean eyefuck Bellamy the entire night. That's not actually real sex," Raven whispered in her ear when she returned to the dance floor.

"Mmhmm," Clarke murmured as she sipped her drink and then held it high in the air so it wouldn't spill during the last part of _Do You Love_ stayed with them through _Twist and Shout_, and they all planted their toes into the floor and held up their calves in order to twist from their hips. Octavia shimmied her shoulders and Raven whipped her hair back and forth and they all reached up to the ceiling for the crescendo of _Ahhh Ahhh Ahhhh Ahhhhhhh._

Sometime around _Runaround Sue_ Octavia shoved Clarke towards a guy she knew from her Anthropology class. He was blonde and cute and could actually catch a rhythm and dance well enough to not look like a fool. Clarke wrapped her arms around his neck and talked in his ear, getting to know the basics as he held an arm around her waist. He even grabbed her hand and swung her out into the crowd and twirled her around and back towards him in one fell swoop. He would do.

For a second she even forgot about Bellamy behind the bar. Anthro guy was tall and charming and had a dashing good boy smile that was so obviously the result of thousands of dollars in dental work but was all the while a little irresistible. He dipped her and when she flew up again and steadied herself on his shoulder the moment was ruined because there Bellamy was again, in that speckled gray V-neck T-shirt that clung in all the right places. Clarke rested a chin on Anthro boy's shoulder and bit her lip. There was a wide open spot at the front of the dance floor that was right within Bellamy's line of vision.

She was being cruel, she knew. And she was being selfish. And stupid. And maybe a little self destructive. But dammit she was angry and she was tired of feeling that yearning in her chest that pulled and pulled. This felt better. This felt much better. So she grabbed Anthro boy's hand and led him right to that open spot.

When the first piano keys of _Cry to Me_ began Clarke turned around in his arms and pressed her back into him. She started to move against him to the rhythm of the song, sensual and bluesy. She swayed back and forth.

The song built up and up and up and when first belt of the song (_Well dontya feel like cryin'. Don't ya feel like cryin'_) let loose that's when she hooked him in. Bellamy had stilled, having found her facing him in his direct line of sight, and was watching her like some predatory animal, laying in wait.

_(Well here I am a honey. Come on. Cry to Me.)_

She pressed her ass into the guy's groin behind her and hooked an arm around his neck, using him as a back drop for the show she was putting on. This one was private, and Bellamy was front and center, shadowed, stormy eyes trained on her and only her. She locked into his gaze and wouldn't let go.

The drums started and she twisted her hips, bringing her arms to her sides so they pressed her breasts together, dipping forward to give him a view down her dress.

_(Take my hand, oh baby won't ya walk with me.)_

Every movement was for him. Every time she teased her bottom lip with her teeth. Every flick of her hair and every swish of her hips. Anthro guy had his hands on his hips and was under the impression he was something more than window dressing, but she didn't mind. It added to the thrill. It added to the power she felt.

_(Oh yeah)_

The song dipped, the lyrics held themselves off and waited for the cue of the drums before starting again and she trailed her hands along her abdomen and down in between her legs, sweeping along her pelvis and bunching her dress there, holding onto the hem and teasing it up and up and up.

_(In the night, but there's no one)_

The muscle in Bellamy's jaw jumped. She could see it from across the room, the way the light flickered off of it and cast shadows along his freckles. He was tense all over, beguiled, entrapped.

When the song ended she bit her bottom lip and smiled at him, catching him pour a shot of bourbon and down it before walking out from behind the bar and disappearing down a dark corridor.

She brought Anthro boy's down head to her level by the nape of his neck. "I could use a refill," she whispered in his ear and he obliged obediently. Obedience, in all its forms, was infinitely boring to Clarke, and she hoped that didn't translate to bed.

While he was away she took the time to find the nearest wall and lean against it, tipping up her toes and bringing her weight to her heels to try and keep her feet from going numb. She idly bopped her head back and forth to the music and scanned the crowd for familiar faces. Her thoughts clunked around in her head and the sharp rush she had just felt plummeted and brought a thick feeling of guilt into her stomach, like an anchor. It was wrenched loose when a strong hand snaked around her arm and clamped down, not too kindly.

"A word?" Bellamy's voice rumbled through her, deep and dark like a growl.

Recovering from the fact that she had just jumped inside of her skin when he'd gripped her and his voice punched into her haze of sleepy drunkenness, she set her jaw and jutted her chin out. "Have a few," she replied.

Then he was pulling at her and dragging her through people and a dark, empty hallway that ran behind the bar and she was scurrying in her tall wedges and dodging feet and spilled liquor and elbows. He only slowed to push down on a thick handle and shove open a door with his shoulder and herd her inside.

She heard the door click and another after, like a lock, and then she was being shoved up against a wall and her eyes only saw a deep red, from the only light above them, and she thought maybe she was in a darkroom. It was just a bathroom, adorned with stickers and flyers pasted to every inch of the walls.

His hands were on her shoulders, holding them firm, and he was close, flush against her. "You're playing with fire," he said. It was derisive, warning.

She leaned in towards him, as much as his grasp on her would allow. "Nitroglycerin," she answered, like a matter of fact.

"What do you want, Clarke?" he rasped.

"To give you a taste of your own medicine."

She gasped and tried to swallow her surprise when his knee wedged in between her thighs.

"That all?"

She nodded vigorously, even as his knee pressed against her pussy and her nails dug into his arms and a whimper curled its way up her throat.

"You're being unfair," he said.

"So are you." The light dampness she'd felt slick her underwear while she was dancing for him gave way to a rush of hot, pulsating heat. She was burning, throbbing against him and ground down, desperate for friction. She brought her lips to his ear, breath humid and steamy. "Be unfair again."

He considered her for a long moment, unwrapping her words in his mind. She wasn't asking much of him. Just to talk in her ear, unfairly, like he had before. Catching on, he lifted her arms above her head and pinned them to the wall, brought his chest flush against hers and ghosted the top of her ear with his lips.

"You were so fucking sexy out there." He hiked his knee up higher and she moaned in response. "Everything you did. The way you moved. The way you looked. Everything about you…made me want to get you alone the first chance I got."

"Bellamy…" She wriggled against him, wanting him to let go of his hold on her so she could move freely over him. So she could touch him.

But he held her still and quieted, suspending them there, chests heaving under the dark, red light.

"If I thought I could fuck you…right here, right now against this wall and walk away and never look back…I would."

He let her go then and she slumped against the wall, needing it to hold her upright. The latch on the door popped open.

"But it's not that simple," he said and left her there.

When she finally made her way back to the dance floor the music was too loud and crowded her head. It disoriented her after the quiet of the bathroom and the shift in light had her seeing red flecks and dots in the air.

"There you are," Octavia said when Clarke finally broke through the last barrier of strangers. "Where you been?" They'd commandeered one of the coveted high-top tables and were perched on the stools while various male strangers loitered around them.

Clarke grabbed a full shot of something amber and strong looking from in front of Raven.

"Hey!" Raven protested. Clarke ignored her and downed the shot with a grimace and a shiver.

"You were right. Your brother's an emotional nightmare," she said to Octavia and then turned around and made out with the first person in sight.

xxx

It was cold out and no matter how tightly she wrapped her arms around herself, she couldn't stop the goosebumps from rising and pebbling all over her exposed skin. She'd given up on walking back to campus in her heels and they hung from her curled fingers, gently bumping up against her side. She figured it was past three in the morning by now.

Mostly she felt really stupid for the chain of events that had led her to where was was now. Her phone was dead. Her friends were probably warm and in bed. But she had waved them off and insisted on hanging on to Tommy whatever his name was. She was going home with him, he lived in McKinley building. It was all good. But by the time her agitation, her abandon, her very rash decision making had worn off so had her courage, her spontaneity and her recklessness. She couldn't follow through with it.

So there she was, walking back to campus along the long, dark, winding stretch of road that led from the town to the grounds of the University. She winced when she moved off the edge of the road and onto the loose gravel on the side to make way for a car coming up behind her. She forgot she was barefoot. The thrumming of the vehicle along the road filled her ears and the headlights cast a misty gleam into the air. It started to slow as it approached her and she tensed, going rigid as she waited for it to pass her.

It didn't.

The window rolled down, a hand crank. "Clarke?"

She exhaled the fear that had lodged itself impulsively in her muscles. She was so relieved she didn't even care that it was Bellamy that had stopped. Tired and cold and feeling dumb, she didn't register the panicked worry in his voice or the fact that he'd pulled over to the side of the road and had gotten out of his car.

"What happened?" He was in front of her now. "You all right?"

Her arms were still crossed over her chest and when he rubbed her upper arms with his hands she shuddered visibly. She trained her eyes on the collar of his jacket. "I'm fine," she said, shaky. "You should see the other guy."

"Hey," he urged softly and tilted her chin up with his finger so she'd look up at him.

"I wanted…I wanted to get off the ride a little too late." Her lip quivered and her eyes welled.

His softened features tightened and flexed with anger. "Are you hurt?"

She shook her head vigorously and wiped at her eyes with her palms. She drew in a steadying, cleansing breath. "Really. I threw the first and only punch."

He cracked a slight smile, then stripped off his jacket and threw it around her shoulders. "I'll drive you home."

The car was already warm but she kept his jacket around her and huddled into it. Her legs were tucked under her, her shoes on the floor.

The only light inside the car's cabin was the soft illumination from the dashboard across their faces. Occasionally the trees would cast shadows along his face and flicker along his freckles.

"I read the book," Clarke said after some time. She was turned towards him, temple against the head rest. His eyes left the road to glance at her and then returned, but he didn't say anything. "I like her," she added.

"What do you like about her?" he asked, sounding tentative, nervous.

Clarke thought for a long minute. She licked her lips. "I guess I like the dichotomy of her. She's power and she's wisdom. She's her mind and her hands. She creates. And she destroys."

He smiled broadly, a real smile. "And casts her design onto the world as she pleases," he added.

"She's a whisper in your ear and a punch in the face," she continued.

"Robert Fitzgerald's translation of _The Odyssey_ is when I first started paying attention to her. The way he embodies her in passages…"

"Recite me one," Clarke said softly, dreamily.

Bellamy looked at her for a long moment; too long for his eyes to be off the road.

Before long he trained his gaze towards the road and gripped the steering wheel more tightly than before. He began to speak, and when he did the lyrical, melodic tempo of the words played against his deep, hoarse voice that entranced her.

"The rose dawn might have found them weeping still had not grey-eyed Athena slowed the night when night was most profound, and held the dawn under the ocean of the east. That glossy team, firebright and daybright, the dawn's horses that draw her heavenward for men-Athena stayed their harnessing."

Clarke remained silent after he had finished, and he kept his eyes trained to the road. She saw his Adam's apple bob in his throat when he gulped and his hands stretched out and then balled themselves up again around the wheel.

His profile was angular and soft all at once. He was harsh and then gentle. He was gruff and then revelatory. Maybe he was Athena.

"Bellamy…" she said and drew it out, leaving his name hanging and dangling on her tongue.

"Yeah?"

"Pull over."

"What's wrong?"

"Pull over," she said again.

The car rolled to a stop and crunched over the loose gravel on the side of the road. He shifted the gear into park.

She made her next movements deliberate and languid, like molasses. First, she undid her seatbelt and drew it away from her with care. Then, she reached forward and turned his key in the ignition to the left. The engine's humming and vibrating cut out and the lights went dark within the car. It was all still, the kind that even breathing would disrupt.

"I'm sorry," she said before she kissed him.

Bellamy tensed, but she cupped his jaw and swept her lips over his, urging him to open his lips for hers, open and waiting and wanting. She pushed, he pulled.

When he did give in it was like melting, and suddenly he was collapsing around her, a hand trailing up her back and another in her hair. Soon he was matching her, throwing his momentum at her, deepening the kiss. Open mouths that panted through the colliding of lips and tongues, like crashing waves over each other.

She crawled out of her seat and into his lap so that she could feel him. So that she could access him and conquer him. Teasing, tentative kisses turned to desperate, needing ones. His hands snaked around her thighs and grabbed each cheek of her ass under dress and gently squeezed.

"I tried," she said into his lips.

"I know," he said back.

"I tried to drop the class," she continued, dragging her lips down his neck and pressing her tongue into each groove and crevice she found between the sinewy muscles right under his smooth, taught skin.

"Forget it," he rasped, breathing hard as she sucked on a patch of skin under his ear. "It's not your fault."

Clarke stopped what she was doing, she wanted to look at him again. She sat up and then jumped when she backed up against the horn and it blared. "Get in the back," she said, manhandling them both through the space in-between the front seats so that they spilled over to the other side in a tangle of limbs.

Before long she was straddling him again and tugging at his shirt until it was up and over his head. She pressed hard against his chest with her palms and held him in place against the worn leather. She wasn't so cruel as he so she let his hands roam while she worked on taking his breath away with her lips. Atop her thighs, around the curve of her ass, up the small of her back, around the edges of her ribs. He bunched her skirt up around her waist good and proper as he sought for more flesh.

"I want this off," he said in regards to her dress.

"Good."

He fumbled with the zipper at the nape of her neck, pulled it down, and the thin fabric fell off of her and pooled around her waist. Then his teeth were tugging lightly at the fabric of her bra, just over her nipple and she moaned, loud and deep. He teased her like that, making no effort to remove her bra, and moved onto the other to give it the same attention. Her hands disappeared within his mess of curls and she ground herself against the hardness of his jeans with desperate need.

Finally and thank God, her bra was off. He unhooked it deftly with one hand. She nearly lost it right then and there. Boys, she thought. She had only ever gotten this far with boys. And she was quickly learning that boys weren't men. Men were different. Men were like this. With a stable hand splayed out across her bare back, holding her in place so that his tongue could circle, tease and tug at her nipple. So that his other hand could slip into her panties and do the same to her clit.

The twofold sensations nearly had her crying out gibberish as she bucked against him and gasped and whimpered. Somehow she made her hands work through the fog of pleasure and she fumbled at his belt, trying to unhook it and get to the button and zipper beyond.

"This is like a damn fortress," she grumbled, but it came out breathily through her gasps.

"It's my chastity belt," he smiled into the space between her breasts. (Just like she'd imagined he would).

"Not funny," she said and tugged his zipper down. Finally.

Then he was lifting his hips and helping her tug his jeans down and she peeled away his boxer-briefs as he struggled to kick off his shoes. Clarke scooted back onto his knees and used the front seats as leverage to lift herself up and let him tear off her bunched dress and her underwear.

She felt a quick chill at being completely naked, but it soon dissipated as skin met skin. She lurched back towards him, grabbed his face in her hands and crushed her mouth to his, pressing and pushing and punishing.

Her hand wrapped around his cock and he groaned into her mouth. She swept the pad of her thumb over the tip while simultaneously slipping her tongue into his mouth. His hips jerked up and he thrust reflexively into her hand.

Clarke brought her lips, hot and heavy to the top of his ear, like he had done to her earlier. "Do it, Bellamy," she whispered. "Fuck me. Right here. Right now."

"Jesus," he swore into the groove of her neck as he gripped her hips and pulled them, rough and obligingly, closer to him. She lifted herself up on her knees and he guided himself to her entrance, positioning just right before he yanked down on her hips and she fell apart.

A searing shock sparked through her, one that reminded her what she had been yearning for for months now. Her inner walls stretched around him and she steadied herself by his shoulders as she adjusted to the feel of him inside her. She felt paralyzed, overcome by her need being fulfilled and by the stars she already saw behind her eyes. She thought maybe she was holding her breath. She felt suspended in space.

Bellamy began to thrust his pelvis up, lightly at first, so he rocked against her. She found her breath again when she gasped at the rippling of nerves that spasmed and pulsed once he began to move inside her.

"You feel so good," he choked out, staccato and harsh. He was thrusting faster now and she tried to meet him halfway with a roll of her hips. "How do I feel?"

There was no way Clarke could put the sensation of Bellamy Blake fucking her for the first time in the back of his car into words and she wanted to kill him for even finding words at such a moment. Him and his fucking words.

"So good," she parroted back. "Oh god, so good."

Encouraged no doubt by her soft mewling of affirmation into his ear, he picked up the pace. Clarke hitched forward and wrapped her arms around his neck as if to hold on for dear life. When she did the angle of his thrusts changed and with each stroke the base of his cock struck her clit and a quick rising and electric pressure built up within her. She buried her face in his neck and whimpered as she gave herself in to the pace he was setting and fell into the rhythmic smacking and coming together of their bodies.

When the building, searing pressure building in her center had climbed just about to its peak she said his name. "Bellamy. Oh god, Bellamy."

"Look at me."

"No. I…I can't." She needed to fall. She needed to collapse into him.

"Look at me, Clarke."

A hand left her hip and he urged her to lift her head by hooking his fingers, soft and gentle, around her ear. His lips were parted to match hers and his eyes their regular shadowed and stormy, but stirring with something shiny. His face was open, vulnerable, like she'd never seen. The hand still on her hip dipped down and his thumb found her bundle of nerves, ready to burst, and pressed down.

She crashed then, and shook as her walls contracted and pulsed around his cock even as he continued his rhythm. Like sailing right on through crashing waves, he fucked her through her orgasm, locking his gaze into hers and not letting her go under.

He came soon after, right as she felt the last flutter of her muscles tear through her. He kissed her hungrily through his last one, two, three thrusts, and then they slumped together. Their bodies, like breath, sighed and exhaled after so much tension. They were covered in a soft sheen of sweat, the windows all fogged up.

Clarke felt strands of her hair damp and sticky against her temple. Curls matted to his forehead.

"So," he said once he caught his breath. "What now?"

* * *

Haven't started chapter 7 yet (I've spoiled you all!) but I fully intend to start it soon. Hang tight. Tell me ALL of your feelings. N=They nourish me.


	7. Chapter 7

_An interlude of sorts! Enjoy! _

* * *

Clarke reached blindly for her underwear, thrown somewhere in the back seat of the car.

What now he had asked her. Like she had a clue.

She cursed Bellamy for just picking up his boxer-briefs and pulling them back on when she still felt exposed, more naked than she'd been a minute before.

"I don't know," she said and pulled on her bra. "Is it out of your system?" She said it meekly and swept her gaze down to the floor. There were her underwear, hidden under the front seat.

"No," Bellamy said plainly. "Yours?"

She felt better, even though she was still missing her dress. She slouched against the back of the seat. "No."

His lips parted, just enough for her to register the movement, and the way the slight gesture signaled his surprise, his hope, his fear. She wondered when she began to notice the minuscule changes in his expression and know what they meant.

"We'll figure it out," he said before he tugged his pants back on and rifled around in the pockets for his crushed carton of cigarettes and wove one between his lips.

When she kissed him goodnight she tasted the stale smoke on his tongue and inhaled it in her hair as she fell into bed, and all of a sudden she didn't hate the smell anymore.

_March_

A few weeks in, when the calendar turned to March with the promise of springtime in its name but only brought the last dregs of winter, they had halfway figured it out.

Clarke hadn't seen him for days at first, not until Tuesday in the laundry room, when he threw his bag so carelessly on the floor to sweep her up into a feverish kiss that half his clothes spilled out onto the tile. She sat sideways across his lap as he sat on that stupid orange chair and kissed him for the entire forty minutes it took to tumble his laundry. His thumb drew circles into the small of her back.

"Don't," she protested when the buzzer screamed and the spinning stopped. But he pressed sloppy kisses that missed her mouth and ran along her cheek and jaw and murmured sorry as he stood up and set her back down on the hard plastic seat by herself. Then she got lost in his neck for the next hour as his clothes dried.

"You're better than a cigarette," he said, their hands having traveled under shirts to explore torsos. They were a tangle of arms and limbs that she didn't know how to unknot.

"That was a terrible compliment," she said.

"Your people skills haven't gotten better," he parried. At least he kissed her again.

When his laundry was finished and he was packing up to go she shoved her hands in her pockets and gnawed on the inside of her mouth. She was about to ask _what now_ and her chest filled with anxiety at the idea of him walking out the door and leaving her with so much not knowing.

"By the way," he said, beating her to it, and pulled out a folded piece of paper from his back pocket and handed it to her. He walked out without another word.

Clarke looked down and noticed the uneven edges of the thing, like it was stripped from a notebook. She peeled it open and found the familiar handwriting she'd come to know as his from all of her horrible Latin assignments. It was a phone number. Under it a dash and a _B. _

xxx

It wasn't normal. She wasn't sure what it was, but it was hers. While others around her had drunken one night stands or quick and messy affairs and hung hair ties on their doors so as to signal to their roommate that they were otherwise occupied, they had perfunctory text messages to alert when the coast was clear, and heated, tense office hours over Latin declensions that reminded her every Wednesday as she sat across from him just exactly how not normal everything was.

"This doesn't have to be strange," he said upon their first meeting, trying to help the situation. It couldn't be helped, she was already glaring.

"Really?" She'd shoved her hands in between her legs and squeezed them together. "Enlighten me as to why not."

Truly, how could this not be strange, when just last night in the laundry room he'd had her backed up against the door with one hand over her mouth and the other buried so deep within her heat so that his palm was cupping her mound.

"It can be just like the laundry room," he said without a hint of irony in his voice.

She balked at him. "Now you're just being an asshole."

When his memories from the night before caught up to him he squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his hand down his face in exasperation. "I meant, believe it or not, academic conversations used to take place there." He shifted in his chair and then his gaze grew hazy and distant, trained on some meaningless paperclip on his desk. "Like before," he said quietly.

A blanket, heavy and scratchy and suffocating, fell over them. She wasn't sure what it was made of. Maybe shame, maybe guilt or regret or futility. Maybe it was crocheted together with all four of them. She felt heat trap under her skin, and carbon dioxide fill the air.

After all, she had basically bullied him into sleeping with her and now she was treating him like it was all his fault. She's the one that took his class. She stuck her finger in the wound that she demanded be healing faster and then twisted.

She was definitely the asshole.

"All right," she said after a while and pulled out her notebook. "Let's get started."

Mostly she just listened to him speak. And watched him work. The way his tongue poked out between his lips just slightly when he was concentrating. The way he rattled off explanations of nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, ablative, and locative. If she could memorize the nuances with which he spoke about each maybe she'd actually learn something.

Things took a turn when he went through all of the declensions for _dominus _(master) m. The way it rolled off of his tongue, _dominos domino dominum domini domino domino,_ sounded like church in the most sinful of ways. The way his jaw moved with the syllables and the rough characters of his voice smoothed out. _domini domini dominos dominorum dominis dominis. _

She muttered the words concertedly after him and wrinkled the space between her brows as she edited her declensions with a purple pen, trying not to think about his pinky finger near hers on the table or the things she wanted to do to him on it.

Clarke left her first mandatory Latin office hours visit knowing two things. One, that she may have actually learned something for the first time all semester. And two, She'd never been more turned on, which was the exact opposite approach she was supposed to take in his office. Where he was officially her TA and she was officially his student. And everything was so incredibly forbidden. Now she only wanted it more and she felt a sinking, horrible feeling for that. She wanted to burn the institutional rulebook to the ground around her and fuck Bellamy Blake on top of the rubble.

Though as much as she wanted him and wanted to light a match to everything else that stood in the way, she often felt a pit in her stomach being carved out and she couldn't distinguish if it was telling her to run towards or run from.

One night, when she ran towards, it manifested in her bare feet tip-toeing across the rough carpeting of the hallways, her heels raised off the ground as if they'd make too much noise. The sharp ding of the elevator that disturbed the silence. At four in the morning even the most nocturnal of residents would have packed up their things from the hallway or common room and tucked themselves away in bed, even if a screen light still glowed. She was alone on the fifth floor, with only the long stretch of hallway in between her and her his door.

"What are you doing here?" he said, all groggy-voiced and squinty-eyed from the light.

"Shh," she said and kissed him like sleeping as she slipped into his room, backed him up until the backs of his knees hit the couch and she pressed her palms to his chest and pushed him down. He woke up when her mouth closed around the head of his cock, though.

When she ran from it was blind instinct. She wouldn't linger, and before the afterglow of sex could wear off and give way to those contended sighs that wrapped their emotional nerves around the other and latched on, she was gone. Clarke found herself pulling on her clothes within seconds, sometimes still tingling at the tips of her nerve endings. Sometimes, when Bellamy's soft moans filled her ears and his strong arms wrapped her up she would stay, but only until he fell asleep and then her feet would hit the floor.

He never asked her why she left, he never mentioned it. He just let her run. Maybe he somehow knew that was the best way to get her to run back. Which she always did.

xxx

One night, when she snuck back into her room, careful to slide the door back into place with a soft click and to slink quietly towards her bed, Raven's voice broke through the dark.

"Either you like to take two hour long showers in the dead of night or you've been sneaking off somewhere to do bad things."

Clarke shoved her comforter under her chin and curled her knees up to her chest in her bed. "My hair's not wet."

"I noticed," Raven said. She heard Raven's duvet rustle as she turned on her side, though she could just barely make out her silhouette in the dark. "Didn't think frat boy from the bar was the type you'd go for more than once."

"You really believe it's him?," Clarke said. They spoke softer than their norm, in hushed tones so as not to disturb the delicate time of night as it transitioned into morning. It was just five.

"No. I don't," Raven ceded.

"No one can know," Clarke whispered into the space between their beds.

"Is it just sex?"

She heard the first birds waking outside their window.

"I think so," Clarke said, turning her gaze outside in to consider it.

"Is that your call?"

"I have no idea."

"Be careful," Raven said and turned on her other side and away from Clarke. "Goodnight. I'd pick you first, babe."

Clarke whispered their mantra back and sent Raven off to sleep. The light that peaked through the window shades had turned that kind of rich and milky grey blue that came right before dawn. The chirping birds kept her awake.

xxx

Truth was, she felt insatiable. He made her feel insatiable. Ultimately, it won out over whatever that carved out pit in her stomach was. In fact, the only time she didn't feel it was when Bellamy had her pinned against the slick tiles of his shower, an arm hooked under her knee for leverage as he slid his cock into her with controlled, torturous, languorous movements. Or when he snuck them into a sound-proofed editing bay in the Journalism department and sunk to his knees almost desperately, his mouth closing over her clit and two fingers curled inside of her, pressing against the sensitive spot he'd recently discovered.

In public they mastered the art of communicating by eye contact. Across the table at group breakfast, a flick of his gaze from his coffee up to her said good morning. If he lingered, it meant she'd be getting an urgent text at some point that day. Because last night wasn't enough. Because tonight is too far away.

Around Octavia, Clarke's quick, furtive glances told him she was aware of him, but needed to focus on his sister. If she stared, often while Octavia was distracted or absentmindedly talking and looking elsewhere, it meant she wanted him alone. A promise for later.

In the common room when it was lively with people, extended eye contact while mid-conversation with Jasper or Harper or Monty meant acknowledging a secret underworld of their own, just barely brushing up against the surface, so no one else could see it breaching.

It was late on a Wednesday night and she hadn't left the common room yet. It had grown quiet, as the gamers and generally rowdy floor members threw in their towels and took to other, more secret parts of the floor. But a few remained. Fox was sitting cross-legged on an upholstered chair, typing diligently at her computer. So was Monty, but from his crooned soft indie rock as he worked on writing code for a class. Octavia was sprawled out on the floor with her massive noise canceling headphones on, bopping her feet in the air as she made flashcards.

Her things were strewn out on the table, she had it to herself, but she'd since taken her sketch book and moved to the couch, where she stretched out length wise and propped herself up against a pillow and held her pad up by her knees. She let Monty's music woo her into a flow where pen met paper and everything else drowned out into the void.

After a while, a shadow eclipsed her from behind and cast itself over her. "What's that?" Clarke jumped. He really needed to stop doing that.

"Hey Bellamy," Monty said and Clarke tipped her head back and looked up at him.

"Ever heard of announcing yourself?" she said in her calculated tone that suggested begrudging amiability with a slight edge of contempt. So far no one had questioned it.

"He hasn't," Octavia piped up. "He was raised under the floor boards."

Bellamy leaned over the back of the couch, resting by his forearms, and cocked an eyebrow at Octavia. "Thought that was you."

Clarke rolled her eyes. "Sounds like the both of you."

Bellamy lingered, hovering over her. His shadow still cast over her paper. "Really, what's this?" he said, softer now.

Clarke met his eyes and had to look away, they were too expressively curious. "For my Intro to Drawing class. I have to fill it by the end of the semester," she said, shrugging it off as nonchalant. Still, she felt his gaze trained on her like a magnifying glass. Like she was an ant about to be burned up by the glare from the sun.

"You draw?" he said, hung up on it.

"Paint too," she said wryly.

Still he lingered. She shot him a glare that told him to snap him out of it and he peeled himself away and around the couch, where he picked up her feet so he could sit at the other end. She kicked him weakly in his thigh.

"This isn't news, Bell," Octavia said, having given up on her headphones completely. "Haven't you seen the elaborate shit she draws on our whiteboards if we're not home?"

"I got a fire-breathing dragon once," Monty chirped.

It was true. Clarke may have developed a habit of drawing all over her friends' whiteboards if they weren't in their rooms. She left it up to them to decipher the message. Mostly it just meant she had come looking for them and they should return the favor. One time when Octavia was in a particularly glum mood—Atom had just told her he wasn't returning to school—Clarke drew her a stormy, chopping ocean, foamy with whitecaps and riddled with rain. But rays of sun poked through the clouds in the distance. It was her inner landscape, she told her.

When she looked up from her pad he was staring at her again, like he'd never seen her before.

xxx

Later, when she was wrapped up in those blue sheets with his tongue laving over her nipple and his hand palming her other breast, he spoke up.

"I've seen the whiteboards," he said and stopped. She tugged at his hair. A flush of heat had just crept under her skin and now she was panting. He rested his chin on her sternum, in between her breasts and pursed his lips as if in thought. "You're good. You're talented," he said finally, in earnest.

"It's just a hobby," she dismissed.

He looked lost, suddenly dejected. Then came a curt nod and he rolled off of her and to the side.

"What?" she said.

"Nothing. I'm tired. Hard night at the bar." Apparently it was his turn to be dismissive. She felt a sourness in her mouth and that carved out place in her stomach started churning, carving deeper and wider still, like a cavernous black hole of she didn't know what (which was characteristic of black holes she guessed).

She had no idea how to read Bellamy on his back, arm draped over his stomach and staring blankly at the ceiling. She wasn't that well versed in him.

She propped herself up on her elbow and said the only thing she could think to say. "Is it out of your system?"

His eyes were shiny and pleading, almost drooping downward in a sad way before he rolled back over to her and enveloped her body with his own, his mouth finding hers in a hopeless kiss. Hopeless in the way that breathing underwater is hopeless, or attempting to walk on the surface of the sun. It just was. So might as well drown. Might as well burn.

She sighed his name and he curled his tongue into her mouth. Her legs wrapped around his waist while her hand guided him to her slit. He took over from there and ran the tip of his cock between her folds, teasing just at her entrance. She was already dripping wet and he was just making it worse.

"Fuck, Bellamy," she managed to strangle out. He was hard and throbbing and needing too, she could feel it. but still he held himself back.

"Is that what you want?" he asked, hoarse and husky by her ear.

She gulped, her throat ran dry and she nodded furiously, fingers curling tightly around his biceps. "I want you…inside of me." She was practically panting out the words. "Right. Now."

And he obliged, burying himself to the hilt within her. When she threw her head back he hooked an arm around her shoulder and held her firm in place so that when he pulled out of her, nearly completely, and then thrust back in she felt every stroke, hard and relentless and without any give of a soft slide along the sheets. And she cried out with a consistent rhythm, in sync with his movements.

"You're in my veins," he said gruffly. "Day in and day out."

She couldn't speak but if she could she wouldn't know how to tell him it was the same for her.

After, when she came back from the bathroom he was already asleep, jaw slacked and relaxed and his lips parted just slightly. Nothing was tensed, nothing was taut, just soft. The rareness of the sight suddenly pulled on her and then she was standing in quicksand, unable to pick up her feet and walk out the door, just like that.

What she could do was wade herself over to his desk and rummage, as quietly as was possible for such a mess, for a post-it. When she found it along with a pen whose cap she yanked off with her teeth, she stopped right before the ball point hit the creamy, yellow square. Something caught the corner of her eye. Something she recognized as her own. It was her Khrushchev paper, pinned with a thumbtack to the cork board on the wall above his desk. The breeze from the open window licked at its corners and it rocked back and forth ever so slightly.

Clarke unhooked it from its dangling spear and leafed through the pages. He had highlighted all of her best points. She ran her finger over them, remembering how she challenged her to see more, and letting time slow and hold itself in place in that quiet minute. It sped up again when she heard him stir in his sleep, and she rushed to catch up. She turned the paper over and scribbled diagonally across the blank page. She left it there and slipped out the door and back to her room, remembering to send a text before she fell asleep and forgot her intention in the freshness of tomorrow's morning sun.

She'd left him a quote, one of her favorites._ "Art is not what you see, but what you make others see." - Degas_

xxx

"Oh my God. Hell's frozen over," Raven said and dropped her gym bag on the concrete floor with a dramatic thud. "She's actually somewhere early."

"Screw you, Raven," Octavia called from within the boxing ring, where she was sparring heatedly with a very handsome, very sculpted, very shirtless guy.

Raven leaned over the Clarke to mumble under her breath. "Well we definitely know why." And Clarke had to stifle a laugh.

Raven had successfully converted the other two girls to the gym, and it was at the very least a weekly visit. Clarke liked the time there; she liked the exertion it took and the release it pulled out of her. She would have once thought that it was beneath her to believe that throwing punches and sparring and attacking and defending would feel so good. But it did.

She even liked the locals, who were still cold and standoffish and sometimes downright rude, but in a way she respected them. One of the instructors, maybe her name was Anya, with razor sharp cheek bones and wild hair would glare at her any chance she got. For some reason, Clarke appreciated that.

In front of her Octavia finished with a roundhouse kick that the guy caught and then twisted her foot so she spun out and fell to the ground. He looked immediately concerned at her wince of pain and bent over to check on her, which was when she rolled over and swiped her legs under his so he fell too. Then she straddled him for good measure, just to make sure it was clear that she'd won, before dissolving into a gleeful laugh.

"Holy crap, did you see that?" She said and threw her thick ponytail around to the side and looked over to where Clarke and Raven stood, dumbfounded.

"Uhh, yeah," Clarke said. "Kind of want to quit while I'm ahead."

Octavia climbed in between the ropes and hopped down, whisking up a water bottle and gulping its contents down. When she finished she steadied her breath and wiped her brow. "This is Lincoln, by the way," she said.

Clarke guessed she meant the hot, sweaty, shirtless man standing just behind her. She and Raven gave weak waves and smiles and Lincoln nodded in acknowledgment before placing a quick kiss against Octavia's temple. "I'm gonna hit the showers," he said and she nodded.

Octavia glared at them when she saw the looks being played out on their faces. "Save it. I'm not discussing this here," she said. And that was that. She plopped herself down on the mat and relaxed as Raven and Clarke sparred and trained. It was her right, she told them, she already got her workout. And it was way hotter than this version. Clarke just turned the corner's of her lips down in concentration while Raven feigned being shot in the heart.

"Are you kidding? We're the hottest," Raven said.

"Maybe you're just too straight," Clarke said. Raven pointed at them both back and forth with an eyebrow cocked and a wildly impressed nod.

Octavia groaned, sitting cross-legged on the floor and looking up at them. They switched and Clarke put on the blockers while Raven sparred. Octavia was growing bored, Clarke could tell because she jostled her knee just like Bellamy did. It was the only sign he showed that he was losing patience behind his stoic, grumpy exterior. Especially in Latin class. Clarke loved watching him, it was pretty much the only thing she focused on in that class, to be fair. But his knee would bounce under his desk and she knew it was really bad when his lips drew themselves flat and he crossed his arms.

"…and when I invited him to Florida too just to be nice-even though we haven't even planned it yet-he actually said yes," Octavia was saying.

"Who?" Clarke said absentmindedly.

"Bellamy."

"What about him?"

"He wants to come on our as-of-now-make-believe Spring Break Road trip. He hasn't been on a real vacation in maybe ever," Octavia explained. Clarke's brain short-circuited and she kind of forgot what she was doing so that Raven's next punch sent her reeling back several steps.

"Jesus, Clarke," Raven said.

"I don't know why, though. It seems like he has a girlfriend," Octavia continued.

Then Clarke froze for real. But she held those damn blockers up and clenched all of her muscles as much as she could, grounding herself in the mat and forcing herself to focus on Raven. She needed to pull at the band of her sports bra though, and everything felt uncomfortable. She felt every bead of sweat on her body.

"What makes you think that?" she asked coolly.

"I dunno. Sibling ESP or something. But he just seems…less lonely. And I don't know if Jasper's _that_ good of company."

Raven trained an eye on Clarke, asking for permission to step in. Clarke gave it her with a flick of her chin. "Think it could just be a fuck buddy or something?" Raven asked while delivering a quick one-one-punch.

Octavia snorted out a laugh. "I don't think Bellamy's capable about being casual about anything."

"Emotional nightmare, remember?" Raven said asa callback and Clarke could have punched her. She wished she had the gloves on right about then.

"Right," Clarke said, gritting her teeth.

"Bet you glad you dodged that bullet," Octavia chimed in. "Also, Raven will you _please_ help me plan this damn thing. It's you or it'll never happen and you know it."

Raven groaned and threw off her gloves. "Fine. But you owe me."

"Shit," Clarke said.

"What?" Octavia asked, suddenly worried.

"I'm late to pick up Wells."

* * *

I'm still reeling from the response I've gotten about this fic. On here, tumblr, even twitter! I'm floored. Thank you all. It means positively everything and I think it will be the thing that ensures I don't leave this unfinished during the hiatus. Share your thoughts!


	8. Chapter 8

_I AM SO SORRY FOR THE WAIT HERE TAKE THIS EXTRA SUPER LONG CHAPTER AND FORGIVE ME PLEASE._

* * *

When Wells stepped off the bus it was raining thin, nearly invisible rain drops that were cold and pricked like pins. Still, Clarke felt a warm smile bloom and grow across her face.

"Hey, you," she said.

"Some Spring Break," Wells said and hoisted his duffel over his shoulder. "I could have gone to Cancun."

"Don't hold that over my head." She nudged his shoulder with her knuckles.

"Oh, I plan to," he teased and threw a strong arm, just as she remembered, across her shoulders. "You're lucky I wrapped this up," he said and lifted a flat, square-shaped thing, like a painting, up in front of him. It was neatly wrapped up in garbage bags. "What's it for, anyway?"

"Just for me. I forgot it back home," Clarke shrugged it off and looked down. There was a slight tear in the corner, but she couldn't help but think if rain trickled in and mixed in with the paint it would be all the better. "Now come on, we've gotta walk."

Wells rolled his eyes but lugged forward. "I'm not in Kansas anymore, am I?"

The walk to campus went from picturesque to miserable about halfway through, and Clarke was cold and grumpy. Her hoodie wasn't doing much to guard from the slaps of rain, stinging and harsh, that came sideways at her eyes. And she felt more than just cold and uncomfortable, but that the outward cold and discomfort seeped inside and sloshed around. Suddenly she wasn't sure about mixing her old life with her new one. There already seemed like such a rickety, long bridge to gap between them. How could she reconcile them both?

Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she hoisted the big garbage bag wrapped square thing under her shoulder and teetered as it threatened to slip out of her grasp.

_B: You have a friend in town?_

She was about to lock her screen and slide her phone back into her pocket when it buzzed again.

_Octavia: Surprise dinner plans tonight!_

_Octavia: I'm awesome, you can thank me later._

_Octavia: Tell Wells to come armed with embarrassing stories from debate club or whatever._

Clarke shoved her phone in her pocket. Two Blakes texting her at once was too much to handle, especially while balancing a two-by-four slippery square under her arm in the rain. And Wells had been in town all of twenty minutes. Great.

When they trudged into her room, the cold rain had turned into a warm and clinging sheen over her skin and inside her clothes and every movement felt like slogging through the jungle.

Raven and Octavia instantly shot to attention. "You look like a wet rat," Raven said.

Clarke promptly started to shed as much clothing as was acceptable, slinking around Wells and not bothering with introductions. He knew Raven anyway. Navigating the narrow room was difficult with four people crowding it, and it made it all the more humid and sticky.

Thankfully Wells knew her predilection for completely bypassing customary social niceties and reached out a hand to Octavia. "Hi, I'm-"

"Wells Jaha. In the flesh." Octavia lifted herself onto her knees atop Clarke's bed and bounced. "I've heard about you," she said, sizing him up and with a daring, teasing gleam in her voice.

"All good things, I hope," Wells said diplomatically.

Raven laughed. "Even the bad things turn out to be heroic, sacrificial good things in the end."

Clarke glanced up from pulling off her socks and though she was looking at the back of his head, she could tell he was embarrassed. His shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged.

"Enough," Clarke said, reprimanding Raven. Raven fell back on her bed and mock pouted. "Come on, I'll show you to the guy's bathroom and just…give me your clothes after and I'll throw them in the dryer," she said to Wells, yanking a towel from on top of her wardrobe and pulling open the door.

"Make sure it's the untainted one!" Raven called out as the door swung shut behind them. Clarke was able to throw her the finger right before it closed.

"What's that supposed to mean," she heard Octavia say.

"Nothing," was Raven's short reply.

Raven knew Wells, but not well. She knew Wells in the way everyone who went to their school knew him. As the headmaster's son. He wore that badge with pride rather than as a stain, and he had been popular, smart, athletic, an all around all-star. A good kid. Of course that brought on more leery looks and whispers than if he had been the rebellious stoner who's mother was the headmaster. The cool kids tolerated him while keeping their distance, and the scholarship kids downright detested him. They chalked every achievement he'd earned up to special treatment on account of his mom. Clarke wouldn't dare admit she'd seen it happen once or twice, most of all to him. She never wanted him to know. Wells had a special chip on his shoulder about his achievements being his very own. And now he was at Georgetown determined not to be his parents, while Clarke was out here determined to run away from hers. Wells seemed like he was doing a better job. Clarke didn't really know what she was doing.

By half past seven they were all dry and smattered around the various surfaces in Clarke's room. The rain was coming down hard and tap tap tapped against their flimsy window. Raven had broken out the secret beers and Octavia was strumming on Monty's guitar, which she'd borrowed since he was giving her lessons. At some point Clarke felt omniscient, like she were floating above them and watching from the outside in. And she watched as Wells settled in and how his halfway smile, unsure and cautious, turned into a laugh within minutes. She smiled to herself as she dropped her head to pick at her fingernails. She smiled to herself at the whole atmosphere of the thing, and she could envision it forever. Maybe this is what life could be, and if that were the case, things would be good.

And then there was a knock at the door. Clarke jumped up to open it.

"Ready to go?"

It was Bellamy, car keys in hand, jacket on, looking somewhere on a spectrum between anticipatory and annoyed.

Clarke stared at him, blinked a few times. She just remembered she had never answered his text from earlier. "Go where?"

Somewhere behind her, chords went haywire along the guitar strings as Octavia piped up. "Surprise! Guess who secured a car for the night?" Octavia thumped over to the door and balanced her chin on Clarke's shoulder, practically batting her eyelashes.

"You didn't know?" Bellamy said, looking straight at Clarke.

Clarke wanted to crawl under her skin and waste away. Bellamy was looking at her. She was looking at Bellamy. Octavia was looking at her looking at Bellamy. Wells and Raven were probably looking at Bellamy and Octavia looking at her and everything was a tense, horrible moment to navigate.

"No," she managed to say, raspy, like she'd forgotten how to speak.

"Do either of you know the definition of surprise?" Octavia said and turned away. Her tone had turned sour, displeased with the reaction she was getting. "Wells, you like pizza and beer, right? You're a guy. Guys like that sort of thing."

"Wherever you're getting your guy facts from is a viable source because I can absolutely confirm this to be true," Wells said, gentlemanly as always. Perceptive, as always. Knowing what was needed from him in a given situation, as always. Octavia beamed and hooked her arm around his, leading the charge towards the outside world and dinner. Wells shot Clarke a knowing look, one that raised questions but also steadfast and used to her moods. Bellamy, in the same awkwardly tense state as Clarke, stepped aside as Octavia pulled Wells through the doorway and into the hall. His arms were crossed, same as hers, and his jaw was set tight and square. Still they stood, half looking at each other and half looking away.

"Didn't know Clarke had a friend or didn't know said friend was a dude?" Raven said to Bellamy as she squeezed by them. She patted him condescendingly, maybe a little consolingly, on the shoulder. "This should be fun."

Bellamy's tense jawed stoicism continued throughout the entire car ride, which was longer than their normal ones because they were driving two towns over to Mount Weather. Octavia had canvased the area and insisted there was a pizza place that not only served the best pizza outside of D.C. but also five dollar pitchers of beer and adorned their plastic red and white checkered tablecloths with whole peanuts for the shucking. Not only that but it was called _Cerberus_ Pizza and she went on and on about how Bellamy better buck up from whatever grad school drama had gotten his panties in a bunch (Raven snickered at that) because he would absolutely _love_ this place.

Thankfully, Clarke scooted all the way into the booth so that she was up against the wood paneling of the wall and Wells was opposite her. Octavia and Raven flanked them and Bellamy got the head of the table, at a rickety chair that he was too big for so his legs sprawled out in all directions. He looked uncouth, unkempt, as compared to Wells, whose casual but neat button down was rolled up above his elbows and who sat up straight. She wanted to ignore Bellamy, because somehow she knew that either Wells or Bellamy would be the odd one out in this situation and she wanted Wells to feel welcome, missed, and wanted. She wanted to be a good friend to him, like he had been to her a thousand times over, and the only way she could do that was to give him her undivided and devoted attention. She wanted to ignore Bellamy.

But she couldn't. Not completely. Not when she felt his eyes trained on her while Wells, at Octavia's beckoning, told stories of Clarke at seven and twelve and seventeen.

"I kid you not. So there she is, standing over me and berating me for reading Harry Potter because it isn't _practical._ We're in fourth grade, I'm trying to read about some hero wizards at a magical boarding school. What's Clarke reading? Anne Frank." Wells' delivery was expert, the girls dissolved into a fit of laughter, and Clarke caught the corners of Bellamy's mouth sneak up as he played with the cheap plastic cup that held his beer and looked down into it.

"What about the first time she got drunk?" Octavia practically begged.

Clarke's eyes widened and Wells beamed at her, but waited until she let her face fall in resignation and just put her head in her hands and waved her hand in surrender. There was no use fighting off Octavia and Raven, greedy as they were to get their hands on the Clarke Griffin archive of embarrassment.

Just then, the pizza, steaming hot, was being delivered to their table and she was forced to lift her hung head of shame from the sticky tablecloth and sit up straight. They all reached and grabbed for slices to plop on their plates.

"Well, we were on a field trip for Model U.N…" Wells began his fateful story, but paused when he looked down at his slice and grimaced.

"Here," Clarke said and waved him over so he held out his plate to her. She neatly picked all of the olives off of his piece and placed them on her own. Wells hated olives.

The rest of the story, all too familiar to her because as it turned out her brain refused to ever shut down completely and no matter how drunk she'd get she couldn't black out, drowned out. It became background noise, because Bellamy's face had turned funny when she'd picked off Wells' olives for him, and she'd caught it and wasn't able to shake it. The way it looked like he was witnessing a strange ritual that both awed him and offended him. The way his eyes trailed her every movement. When she could finally catch his eye she glared at him to stop it. He was making her squirm under his blanket of quiet, confusing judgement.

"…and it later came to light that the reason she was able to get Russia to abstain from using its veto against Kosovo's bid to become its own country was because she had won sixteen straight games of flip-cup and won a bet," Wells was finishing up his story. "And that's how Clarke Griffin became a legend at Model U.N. and got drunk for the first time when she was fifteen."

Raven and Octavia were wheezing, Octavia nearly slunk down under the table, she was giggling so hard.

"Do you want my crust?" Clarke asked absentmindedly and Wells nodded and grabbed her discarded pieces from her plate. Again, she felt Bellamy watch them like a hawk. No, not a hawk. Hawks were regal and graceful in their circling. He was a vulture, waiting too eagerly to dive in.

And dive he did.

"What's your story, Wells?" Bellamy finally said.

"My story?" Wells asked.

"Yeah," Bellamy shrugged. "You're Clarke's mysterious best friend, the harbinger of old stories and all that. What are you all about?"

The table fell silent. Bellamy's tone was challenging, confrontational. He leaned back in his chair and waited, a ghost of a gloating smile peppering his lips. And finally, when Wells opened his mouth to think of something to say, he interrupted. "The Cliff Notes. Please," Bellamy added with a halt of his hand and an obvious smirk.

Wells, in an equal match to whatever peacocking was suddenly transpiring in the pizza place booth, took his time reaching for his beer and taking a swig, then returning it with care to the table. "Nothing mysterious about me, man," he said finally. "I'm just a pretty normal guy."

"Oh, I doubt that," Bellamy egged on and threw his hands behind his head, leaning back even more so the front legs of his chair came off the tile. Clarke knew that habit and was bubbling with irritation that she knew that habit. "Let me guess…"

"Bellamy," Octavia warned.

"You go to Georgetown, your jacket tells as much. Poli-sci major? And if you hail from the Jaha's that I've heard about then my guess is you're following in your father's footsteps only to prove you can be better than him. You're one of those idealist poli-sci kids, right? Want to beat the man by being the man?"

Wells held his stare but still remained silent. He did that when he got angry. He bottled it all up, held it in. Wells was no snake that hissed and lashed out. He was a Redwood, who grew tall and strong and remained still when rain and snow and mud and whatever other elements were slung his way.

"First of all," Raven cut in and then promptly punched Bellamy right in the bicep. Her boxing training paid off, because he winced and rubbed it with his palm. "You're an asshole. Second of all…" she dropped her voice a little lower as if to whisper to him, though they could all hear, "…how is it that you're so right all the time?"

"Yeah," Wells said coolly and reached for his beer again. "Something like that."

"Hope you make it," Bellamy said and lifted his cup to cheers derisively. "The good ones don't tend to survive out there."

"You're definitely paying, dickhead," Octavia said and downed her beer before refilling her cup from the pitcher.

Clarke remained silent, seething.

xxx

When they'd gotten back to campus and she'd stalked off, fast and deliberate and without a word, the others followed and left Bellamy behind. Thankfully his attempt to bring everyone down to the mood he was in only lasted a few minutes after being free from his aggressively surly presence. They had built a fort for Wells to sleep in on the narrow strip of floor between Clarke and Raven's beds. Raven engineered it to perfection, while Octavia insisted they add elements to make it feel more homey. Clarke either voiced her approval or disapproval on decisions being made and, she hated to admit, was the one who started the pillow fight by smacking Wells right in the face when she was supposed to just hand it over to Octavia.

For a while her gnawing anger and discomfort dissolved and light, carbonated bubbles of release and fizzy happiness danced around under her skin. Around three, when the lights were out and everyone, even Octavia who had crawled into bed with Clarke, was asleep, the fizzy carbonation went flat.

She tried to yell herself to sleep in her brain. She couldn't even toss and turn, she was tucked up between the wall and Octavia with only inches to move. Her leg started to fall asleep and she wanted to turn on her other side. Finally she sighed into the air, and her frustration disturbed the peaceful room. She couldn't be there any longer.

She knocked on his door, hard, and with some urgency. Flatness had turned to fury somewhere between floors three and five and between the bright lights and course carpet that burned her eyes and grated her feet through her socks.

He was shirtless, barefoot, but his black jeans were still on and his eyes weren't hooded and his hair wasn't tousled. He definitely had not been asleep. "Finally. There you are," he said.

"Shut up." It came out of her mouth like razors. Bellamy's lips parted, falling open as the only sign he was moved by her tone. "This isn't a game, Bellamy. He's my _best_ friend. What were you trying to prove, huh? That you're a giant asshole?" Clarke waited for his response, but it didn't come. Instead, troubled and chaotic pupils and a pronounced gulp. Maybe it was to swallow his anger. Or the rest of his dickishness. She needed him to answer, just yelling at him helped some, but not enough. With newfound anger at his stoicism rising in the back of her throat, she crossed her arms. "Well, mission accomplished. And by the way, jealousy doesn't look good on you."

Clarke turned to stalk off, figuring she'd sit and seethe in the common room until her eyelids became too heavy to hold up. But Bellamy had another idea. She whipped around and nearly fell forward at the velocity. He had grabbed her by the upper arm and pulled her back to him, and she stumbled several steps forward, crossing the threshold into his room and landing flush against his chest.

"What are you-" but he kissed her words away. Crushed, really. His lips were at once supple and soft but also bruising and carried behind them such ferocity that she couldn't meet it, and soon she reeled back and allowed herself to be pushed up, hard, against the wall. It steadied her, which she was thankful for, because he was coming at her like a hurricane. She let herself be swept up in it, in its wildness and its force. Soon, his hands were hot and roaming under her shirt and pulling it off. She heard the slam of the door, maybe his foot had kicked it closed behind them, she didn't know. All she knew was the blur she felt, not only saw, but felt in her head and behind her eyes, when his lips raked up her neck and bit her skin so that she gasped in surprise. Not only surprise, but arousal too, and when his lips returned to hers but his teeth pulled and tugged at her bottom one, there was no denying the rush of hot liquid that pooled at the base of her underwear and caused her to rub her thighs together.

Clarke's hands reached for his shoulders and began traveling down towards his chest, but he grabbed her arms and pinned them to the wall. His hand was tight around her wrists and pinched the skin there, but she didn't mind. His other hand plowed beneath the elastic of her shorts, shoved aside the fabric of her underwear with umbrage, and dipped his fingers into her slick folds.

"Still mad at me?" he urged as he inserted a finger. It didn't sound like he was pleading, or like he was checking in. It sounded more like goading.

She threw her head back, looked up to the popcorn ceiling as her mouth fell open in a silent gasp. "Yes," she managed to say.

"Really?" He slipped a second finger inside. "How wet you are begs to say otherwise." He nipped the patch of skin behind her earlobe. It stung, but her knees nearly went weak.

"That has nothing to do with whether I'm mad at you or not," she said, nearly panting. She wanted to kiss him again and shut him up.

"Fair enough," he said and the vibration of his voice, deep and rough, reverberated into her lips as he kissed her once more. She opened her mouth to sweep her tongue along his and get as much of herself around him as she could, but he soon pulled away entirely and turned her around so she was facing the wall, her cheek up against its shiny eggshell paint. She could almost smell it, as if it were new. But then he was pulling her shorts down and pressing his denim covered erection into her ass and snaking his arm around her to swipe a rough thumb over her nipple through her bra.

This, whatever he was doing, was no apology fuck. Nor was it a feverish, desperate one, as if he were trying to hang on to her. It wasn't one of reverent passion or urgent need. This was pure aggression. He was marking her, which would be evident in the morning no doubt, since he was sucking hard on the place where her neck sloped into her shoulder. He was claiming her. This was assertion.

"Is he asleep?" Bellamy asked as he detached his mouth from her neck to yank down her underwear.

Clarke had a hard time registering his words in her head, they clunked and rattled. She had trouble stepping out of the legs of her panties and thought she'd stumble and fall if not for her palms up against the wall. Everything was a blur. "What?"

"Wells," Bellamy said roughly. "Is he asleep?"

She didn't know why he was asking about Wells. She didn't know why it mattered. But she nodded her answer anyway, gulping down her anticipation at the sound of him pulling down the zipper of his jeans.

"Good," he said and he gripped her hips and yanked them towards him so that she was partially bent over, her palms steadying herself by splaying flat against the wall.

"Why?" she asked. She felt the tip of his cock positioned at her entrance.

His lips were at her ear, his breath hot and humid. "Because I'm going to fuck you until the sun comes up," he said and plunged into her so suddenly and so deep that she groaned, deep and guttural and primal.

And he did.

First, like that, from behind and up against the wall, and when she came his sturdy arm coiled around her stomach to hold her up as she shook and her legs went weak. Then he turned her around and hoisted her up so her legs were wrapped around his hips and he took her against the wall a second time. Later, she found herself with her back against the cold surface of his kitchen table, her legs in the air and feet up by his shoulders. He came with a hand half around her neck, his thumb pressing into her collarbone and the tips of his fingers digging into the nape of her neck, then sunk to his knees and sucked on her clit until she was crying out in mewls and moans and he was ready once more.

Finally, he carried her to the bed, her whole body limp and pliable after having been wracked by the power of her two orgasms. And now it was all she could do to just hold on, let his hurricane envelope her and engulf her and drown her. He held her up, maneuvered her limbs into his desired positions and kept on going. With his hand hooked under her knee and his cock moving in and out of her in rough, unpatterened rhythms so as to surprise her with each thrust, her body tensed and she felt the familiar sensation of a rising heat under her skin, one that spread all over until she would combust in a tiny explosion.

"No," he said, gravelly into her ear. "Don't come." He slowed his movements, but still he rocked against her.

Her mind whirled around in confusion, it was already slipping into abandon and entropy and now he was telling her to pick up the pieces she had just begun to let slip and break apart and put them back together. "I…" she stuttered. "Bellamy, I can't I…"

He stilled and hiked himself up so that he was looking down at her. Already she felt the edge grow dull, the heat seep back into the woodwork. The atmosphere shifted, from the sweaty, frantic and combustive quality it held into a muted one. It was still thick with something, like they were suspended in space and time. His thumb ghosted over her lips, which felt dry and parched and she was panting still. He sought her eyes and she wanted to look past them, at his eyebrows, but she resisted and met him, pupil to pupil.

"Sun's not up yet," he said quietly. "Gotta pace yourself."

She scoffed at him with a amused smile. "Easier said than done. I've just been along for the ride."

Bellamy smiled back, for the first time that night, and hooked his thumb along her bottom teeth and hitched his hips up slightly in response. Clarke scraped her teeth along his knuckle and sighed at the friction. She'd come down from her precipice, and the rest of the night was spent languorously climbing back up it. It was quieter then, as he hoisted her up into his lap and she wrapped her legs around him, clutching his shoulders to keep herself upright. They moved together, but he led the ebbs and flows of their rocking, his thrusting. She was facing the narrow window that ran along the back wall above his headboard and watched the sky turn from milky blue to lavender to pastel pink as he fucked her, her arms wrapped around his shoulders and hands gripping his neck as he picked up the pace, faster and faster. And when she came finally, the sun was light and hazy and the sky not yet blue, but blown out and overexposed in a bright yellow gray.

xxx

The next day she took Wells hiking, and they could actually spend time together without outside observers. But maybe that wasn't entirely true, since every few minutes she caught herself touching the place on her collarbone where there were spots of tiny, ruptured blood vessels just under her skin, remnants of Bellamy's claim on her just hours earlier. She felt like an iceberg, only a quarter of which was above the surface. The rest, a secret mass kept hidden underwater.

They talked of home and their families and school and the future, but all the while her ears felt clogged with water, and his voice was sometimes far away because she was imagining Bellamy's teeth pulling at her skin and Bellamy's chest beneath her hands, how hard and firm it was.

"You okay?" Wells asked eventually. "You seem far away."

"Yeah." Clarke shook the flashes of memory from her head. "Yeah, of course. Just taking it all in."

They stood at an outlook that opened up into a ravine filled with dense forrest and sloping hills. The green was filling in and only some of the branches were still bare from winter. Birds chirped in the distance and echoed throughout the canyon. It was cool and damp and she could smell the tree bark and the faint scent of eucalyptus.

"You wear the weight of your thoughts on your sleeve, Clarke," Wells said and she glanced at him sideways, her brow furrowed in slight annoyance. Damn him for knowing her so well. "Don't carry so much burden. You've got a good thing here. And good people."

She took a deep breath in, letting the fresh air fill her lungs. She felt them expand and bloom as she looked out towards the horizon. "You can tell all that from a night?"

"'Course I can," Wells said and nudged her shoulder. She didn't fight the lopsided smile that crept up on her. "Even Bellamy."

Her smile dissolved. "What do you mean?"

"He may be a dick but he respects you. Maybe even admires you."

Clarke pursed her lips, put on her best unamused face. "He's just Octavia's brother. And my RD. And…my Latin TA." Wells cocked an eyebrow at her and she crossed her arms, working herself into a huff. "He's a nuissance. I can't escape him." Still, he looked at her with a wry smile. "What?"

Wells shook his head. "Nothing. Let's go."

The rest of the day was spent with Raven and Octavia and Monty on the Commons. Jasper joined for a little while and the boys played frisbee. Octavia braided hair and Raven sucked down her iced coffee so fast so that she could show them how to throw a frisbee like "not a sissy", as she put it. All in all it was perfect, and Clarke was content. She watched her friends welcome Wells and Wells integrate himself into her life here, even if it was just temporary. It felt good. She felt whole…nearly. Still her fingertips traced the spots on her neck that were still raw and sensitive, and danced along the faint bruises that surfaced on her hip bone. Later, while Raven and Wells were showering and she found a moment of quiet in her room before getting ready to go out, she stood in front of her mirror and mapped every mark, visible or not visible, on her body where he had touched. His absence all day was excruciating, because it didn't feel like one. She felt that he was right there, somewhere around the corner, or beyond the hall, or just behind her. He was almost there all day. Except he wasn't.

The party that night was a house party not far from campus, so they walked, a whole troupe, raucous and boisterous and yelling in the streets. They were nearly the entire third floor strong, a caravan of undergrads with conspicuous water bottles filled with amber colored liquid under their arms. Maybe that was why Bellamy chose to show up on his own, via a different route, because he was already there when they walked through the door. Clarke realized it wasn't just with her that he couldn't be seen. It was the others too. She caught his eye as he glanced towards the crowd and her hand went instinctively to her collarbone. His glance fluttered away quickly after that and he continued to entertain whomever he was talking to at the kitchen counter.

Clarke didn't see him again until she and Wells had been challenged to, and won, a game of beer pong against Miller and Raven. By that time the beer and rush of victory had bolstered her and she threw her hands up in the air. "Who wants to get beat down next?"

Octavia was dragging Bellamy by his sleeve towards the other end of the table. "Not if the Blakes have anything to say about it," she said, game face on. Clarke smiled at Bellamy, but his expression was stone-faced and sour. She tried to shake it off.

"Not gonna lie, I'm a little intimidated," Wells said, acting out as if a chill were going through his body.

Octavia squinted her eyes at him. "As you should be."

The Blakes were a very intense duo to play beer pong against it turned out, somewhat unsurprisingly. It was like going to battle. There was no fun to be had. They were competitive, derisive when their opponents were playing, unruly when they disagreed with a call, and downright obnoxious when they sank a cup. In response, Clarke and Wells grew competitive too, which manifested in their stoic, seething focus and concentration to destroy their enemies. If bemused looks could kill.

When Clarke sank a cup she didn't cheer, she kept her face steely and allowed Wells to pat her on the back or high-five her. They were behind by three. "Years of practice can't be beat," Bellamy taunted. Clarke narrowed her eyes to focus on her second throw. "It's all right if you're new at this. Lightning most likely won't strike twice. But hey! Bet Wells taught you a few tricks." Her ball missed, her cheeks burned. Octavia cheered and when her ball sunk another cup Clarke downed it in seconds and them slammed it on the table.

"I'm going to the bathroom. Wells can throw for me," she said sharply and stalked off.

She didn't return to the game. Instead, she found a group of strangers in the back living room who fed her shots of vodka from a ten dollar plastic handle, which she readily took to try and cleanse the dirty feeling of Bellamy's under the radar innuendo had given her. She grew bored once her newfound friends lit up a blunt and started waxing poetic about LeBron, and she wandered off down the hallway towards her oldfound friends. When the dim hallway opened up to the light and laughter of the front living area she saw it. Directly in front of her, Bellamy had his arm propped against the wall and was leaning forward, flanking some upper classman, or rather, classwoman. His free hand dangled by his side and held a bottle of beer, and he was dipping his head down towards her as her eyes swept up and she practically bobbed her head at him. Clarke thought it might roll right off if she flirted too hard. He caught her out of the corner of his eye and she immediately turned, a hard left, towards the kitchen.

"Hey," Raven said as she sidled up beside her. Clarke grabbed a new red solo cup. "You okay?"

"Why does everyone keep asking me that today?" Clarke said and the empty cup nearly bounced away when she slammed it down on the counter.

Raven cocked her head to the side. "Oh, I don't know. Maybe because Bellamy is acting like a giant fuckboy and has been ever since Wells got to town and you have hickeys on your neck that weren't there yesterday…" Raven trailed off and her gaze followed Clarke's, which had gone back to the wall where Bellamy was, making a big show of his ability to charm a lady that wasn't Clarke.

"He's peacocking," Clarke said sourly.

"Ignore him," Raven said.

"I can't."

Raven's gears shifted, always knowing when to move from cynical to soft. "It's not just sex, is it?"

"No, but…" Clarke reached for the vodka. "I don't know what it is."

Raven took the bottle from her. "Here, babe, let me. I'll make you a drink so good you won't remember it in the morning."

She did make a hell of a drink, and Clarke felt the angry tension in her knuckles give way to the loss of such control over motor functions that took so much effort. She turned her back and faced Raven and Octavia and Harper and pretended to be interested in their conversation, even as she willed herself eyeballs on the back of her head.

When Wells joined the group from wherever he had been (she loved that he was so self-sufficient), she threw her arms around him and greeted him like it'd been years.

"Okay, who got her drunk?" Wells asked teasingly and Raven raised her hand proudly.

"Commendable," Wells said and raised his cup to her.

"A true feat," Raven said and clinked her plastic cup with his.

"Now this I can't wait to see," Octavia said.

Apparently it was entertaining. From what she learned later, and over time, and often would have rather drowned herself in her cereal than here more snippets from the night, she was the life of the party. A very wasted Clarke apparently became overly affectionate, very validating and complimentary, and generally liked to dance. Jasper told her she absolutely yelled at someone for changing the song in the middle of a Ja Rule classic. Miller claimed she berated him for their not being better friends and attributed it to their both being stand-offish and suspicious of others. Monty said she went on a diatribe about being able to walk through Van Gogh's mind if you follow his work chronologically. If you've been to Amsterdam you'll know what I mean, she had said. Monty had, but was otherwise occupied, and she smacked him on the back of his head for that.

And all the while she clung to Wells. She apparently got hangy too, and her arms were perpetually latched onto his broad shoulder to steady her. "You're my best friend," she said and placed her cheek against his arm.

"Mine too," he said instantly.

"Sorry I'm so awful. But you're stuck with me."

She swayed and Wells wrapped a steadying arm around her waist. "It's you. You can't be awful."

"Happily stuck?" she asked.

"Happily stuck," Wells affirmed. "Like old marrieds."

"Good."

"How about we get you some water?" Wells suggested, ever so gently. She nodded and swung around, still hooked to his arm, and they nearly ran right into Bellamy. She definitely knocked into his cup and he yanked it back towards him, avoiding a full on disaster.

"Hey Princess," Bellamy drawled, taking in the sight before him. "Having fun, I see." She must have looked as drunk as she felt.

"Actually, yes. Contrary to popular belief, I am fun," she said haughtily, jutting her chin out in defiance.

"Depends who you ask," Bellamy said. "And what their definition of fun is."

Clarke wasn't too drunk to miss his reference. Another night she would have loved the way he spoke in code, in a language that was just for them, so that out in plain sight no one else could decipher it. A simple callout to what was hidden beneath the surface and she would have typically been reduced to putty. Any other night, she loved that game. Tonight didn't feel like a game she wanted to play.

"Right. Well, if you'll excuse us. The lady needs some water," Wells said.

"The lady does," Clarke affirmed and nodded.

"Of course," Bellamy said and stepped aside. "And Wells, don't do anything I wouldn't do."

That bastard. Another quip so innocent to everyone else, and carrying so much weight to her ears that it hit like a heavy punch to the gut. Clarke let go of Wells and whipped around to face Bellamy head on. Wells stood between them, unsure and on edge, just in her periphery.

"What do you want, Bellamy?" she hissed. She knew better than to yell. Lest they be found out. "What do you want to know? That Wells and I aren't fucking? Huh?" She railed forward at him and he took a step back, but held his jaw tight and rigid. "You want to know that we made out when we were fifteen? And we tried to date for a few months but that was also the same time I figured out I liked girls too. Is that what you want? Does that satisfy you?"

Bellamy's jaw slacked and his eyes widened in surprise. His defensive stance melted away too, and his shoulders fell down his back. He didn't say anything. Maybe he would have if she had waited, but Clarke was seething and nearly shaking with rage and she wanted to run outside and yell and yell. So she stalked off and didn't look back.

"What, you didn't know?" Wells said snidely to Bellamy before he followed her out the door and into the night air.

When her feet hit the grass and the atmosphere changed she felt the spinning in her head. Suddenly the lawn was lopsided and sloping to the side and back again and she couldn't keep her footing. The ground was moving beneath her and she thought maybe it would be easier to ride if she sat down on it. So she did.

"Hey now," a voice jutted into the spinning world, all stretched and garbled, like bending sound waves. It was Wells. "Let's get you home, okay?"

Clarke nodded even as she put her hand up to halt him from hoisting her up. "Not yet. Soon," she said meekly.

"Clarke," a new voice, rougher and more insistent, intruded her space. She turned her head and just caught the sight of Bellamy, wide-eyed and anxious, standing over her. "What happened?"

"Raven made her a drink she'd, and I quote, 'be sure to forget'," Wells said.

"Great," Bellamy said and sighed. Clarke felt cold, and she needed the spinning to stop. She must have shivered, because soon a jacket that didn't belong to Wells was draped over her shoulders. She tried to lie down but was met with two sets of strong, familiar arms lifting her up and onto her feet.

"No," she whined and protested, but they didn't listen. "I just need to lie down for a while. I just need to…" she found a pillow in the form of Bellamy's chest and pressed her forehead against it. She felt his hand on the back of her head and it steadied her. She breathed deeply, and closed her eyes until the spinning stopped.

"You good?" Bellamy asked finally, as if he knew exactly what she was experiencing, as if he knew the moment the world stilled. She nodded and he slowly let go of her and unwrapped her from the protective shield of his body.

"I have my car," he said above her to Wells. "I'll drive her. The both of you."

She wasn't sure how she ended up in the elevator-maybe they teleported-but there she was, and she was slumping over so much that Wells was practically holding her up. She kept her eyes closed, the world was too nauseating, and let her feet be led to wherever they needed to go. To her bed, she hoped. Maybe the women's bathroom.

"Want to go to bed, Clarke? Or the bathroom? Do you think you'll be sick?" Wells asked quietly, slowly, so she could take in the options.

She shook her head vehemently even as she said, "Bathroom."

"What are you doing? She lives on three," Wells said to Bellamy in a hushed whisper.

"I have a bathroom in my room. She won't be caught by her RA then," Bellamy said simply.

She puked in Bellamy's toilet for a half an hour. The second she could, she locked both of them out and would only unlock the door to allow the safe passage of a glass of water. She thought of Octavia and her cheek to the toilet seat at Thanksgiving, and then thought of how now both of Bellamy's girls have ended up drunk and unable to hold their liquor in his bathroom. _His_ girls. God, where did her stupid mind go. Now she felt even worse, and the taste in her mouth even more sour. But she figured she was done, for the time being anyway, and gulped from her water and sidled up against the closed door and just sat.

She felt strung out, inside out, burned out. All the outs, really. Her eyes were swollen and red and puffy and watery from the burn of the alcohol coming back up and chewing at her esophagus and she just wanted to close them and sleep. But she couldn't, so closing them and trying to just be silent and one with the cold tile of the bathroom floor would have to suffice. Soon her breathing shallowed and her hiccups stopped and she could hear the humming of the electricity course through the overhead light. And something else. Voices. Muffled at first, like murmurs, but then clearer and clearer as if they were meant for her.

"You do this for all your residents?" Wells was asking.

There was some shuffling of feet and furniture, like a chair was being drawn out. Then settling. "Not exactly." It was Bellamy.

"You're more than just the RD. The TA. The friend's older brother…" Wells said carefully. "Aren't you?"

There was an excruciating pause, and Clarke held her breath throughout it, figuring they'd hear her if she dared exhale and the moment to eavesdrop would retreat into muffled murmurs once again.

"I don't know what I am," Bellamy said. "Just a stranger in the laundry room."

Her mouth turned up at that and she dipped her head. The grout between the tiles was so dark, but grey, not black. She liked that, and ran a toe along the bumpy line.

One of them sighed deeply, maybe stretched. It was late and she was keeping them from sleep. "Look, you and me. We don't have a problem," Wells said. "Unless you hurt her. Then we'll have problems. You understand?"

A breathy scoff. "More than you know," Bellamy said.

The bottoms of a chair scraped against the laminate wood floor of the kitchen. "You make sure she gets to sleep all right." She imagined Wells was standing now.

"You should stay," Bellamy said. "You know her. You'll know what she needs." His voice was scratchy, vulnerable.

"So do you. We just know different parts of her," Wells said.

She heard the soft click of the door, and silence hung in the air once more. A drawer might have opened, and the padding of feet softly around the room, but that was it. She let herself exhale.

"Clarke?" His voice was soft, tentative. "You good?"

Her answer was the soft knock of the back of her head against the door.

"Will you unlock the door?"

She weighed her options. Which, if she was being honest, were nonsensical and convoluted and she was absolutely still very inebriated. She briefly considered curling up in the tub to sleep. Or just right there on the tile, with the grout. But her feet were cold. And Wells! Where was Wells?

She reached her hand up and fumbled with the knob and twisted until the push button lock popped out. She scooted herself away from the door and let it open towards her. Bellamy crouched down to her level once he saw her sitting on the floor.

"Where's Wells?" she said, disoriented.

"Back in your room. Raven let him in," Bellamy said and held out his hand to brush an untamed, tangled string of hair behind her ear. "Come on out, the bathroom'll be there if you need it." He helped her up, and truth was, she lost the journey to his bed somewhere in her mind, never to return to her. Next thing she knew she was under the covers and she was lifting her arms up over her head. You don't want to sleep in your nice dress, do you, he asked. She shook her head and up her arms went. It was all she remembered until morning, when she woke up in his T-shirt. Alone. He had slept on the couch.

xxx

She slipped back into her room at six and saw that Wells hadn't even taken her bed, he still slept in the pillow fort they'd built for him. She crawled under the covers and shivered, they were cold, and she had to curl up into a ball to warm them up.

Bellamy didn't show to family breakfast, and she couldn't eat anything anyway, but Raven forced her to come and not make Wells experience the ritual on his own. It was his last day after all.

They left an hour early to walk to the bus station so that they could take their time and amble, in an effort to stretch out the last of their minutes together into a small infinity. Maybe it was the lack of dopamine left in her body, but with each small step she felt more and more like crying. She didn't exactly know why, but an inexplicable sadness flooded within her and rose and rose. When they reached the depot it threatened to overflow.

"Hey kiddo," Wells said softly and caught her chin in between his thumb and forefinger. "You're doin' just fine."

She nodded and felt her chin crinkle and her lip quiver. It was so stupid. There was no reason to cry. He hugged her before her tears threatened to fall so they could be hidden away in his jacket.

"One of these days I'm gonna be the one to take care of you," she said when she pulled back.

"Bullshit. I know you're the one who put yogurt in the guys' basketball shoes who were bullying me in eighth grade."

She laughed through her tears then and wiped them away. "I don't know what you're talking about."

And she sent him on his way.

xxx

Clarke spent the rest of her Sunday in bed. She wasted it away, not on sleep, but on fragments of thoughts that gnawed their way into her brain in shards and broken pieces. Nothing formed completely, nothing stuck for very long, but it was enough to keep her anxious and awake as if in some sort of fitful limbo. She thought of her father, and of Finn. She thought of the time she blamed Wells for it all. And fighting with her mother. She couldn't keep all of her darkest thoughts locked away, and they crept in and she was powerless to their glimpses before she pushed them back again. Even Bellamy, the way he hovered over that girl against the wall. Then Bellamy, the way he took her against the wall. His jeering tone, insinuating the worst. Then the gentle pads of his fingertips as they stroked her cheek. It went on for hours, and when Raven insisted on putting on their Sunday music and keeping with the ritual, Clarke didn't argue. But she stayed in bed, tucked under the covers.

"I hooked up with a random guy last night," Raven said suddenly.

Clarke drew back her covers, propped herself up on her elbow. "That's new."

"I know," Raven said and looked down. She was fidgeting. "It's supposed to make you feel better. But…It felt awful. Just so, I don't know, empty."

"And if it hadn't been with a random guy?" Clarke asked, as gently as she could.

Raven shrugged, a deep, long shrug and sighed as if to steady her voice. "I've tried. I've tried to do the just sex thing. The casual thing, like you. And I just feel sad and even more alone. I think I'm broken."

"If it's any consolation, I'm apparently no good at the casual thing either. I'm casual poison."

"What compound? Like arsenic or like batrachotoxin?" Raven asked and Clarke glared at her. "What? I thought you were taking chemistry."

Clarke flopped back on her bed with dramatic emphasis and threw an arm over her eyes. "I don't know, antifreeze or something. What about you?"

"Easy," Raven said. "Concentrated hydrogen peroxide."

"That's not a poison, that's an explosive."

"Exactly." Raven mimed an explosion with her hands. "Boom."

They both jumped when there was a knock at the door, right at the end of Raven's imaginary explosion. They looked at each other. Raven was sitting atop her covers, and Clarke was absolutely not moving from under hers. Raven groaned as she got up and shuffled towards the door and yanked it open. "You're not supposed to be here," she said and looked him up and down. It was Bellamy, and he was scratching the back of his head with one hand, looking oddly bashful.

"I could write you up for that beer you keep in your fridge if you want to make it legitimate," Bellamy said.

Raven stared him down while he glanced beyond her at Clarke. She just sat there.

"Fine," Raven said and reached behind her to swipe up her keys and her phone from her desk. "I'll make myself scarce." And she brushed past him with a warning, intimidating pause before disappearing down the hall.

This felt off, and wholly strange. They were out of place, sticking out in this space like a sore thumb. It wasn't them in the laundry room, or with Octavia, or tangled up in his blue bedsheets. It wasn't even studying in his office during office hours, or the way they actively tried to never look at each other during class. He was standing in her dorm room, hovering, and she was just sitting in her bed, looking dumbly back at him.

"You feelin' okay?" he said finally.

"What are you doing here, Bellamy?" She rubbed her eyes. Might as well slash right to the point with a machete. Something felt like it was ending and it pressed heavily on her chest like a boulder.

"I can't do this anymore, Clarke," he said. There it was. She twisted her sheets in her hands. "The way it is now."

She took a quiet breath to steady her voice. "I understand." She wanted to make it a clean break, tie it up in a nice bow and send it on its way.

"You don't," he said back in an instant.

"Enlighten me," she said, eyes narrowing and feeling that familiar current of electric annoyance she hated that she loved so much.

Bellamy ran a hand along his forehead and through the front of his hair, tangling his fingers in his curls. "I was jealous of Wells."

"Really? You don't say," she said, dripping with sarcasm.

"The way you knew him. And the way he knew you."

"We've known each other since we were five, Bellamy. Get over it," she said bitterly.

"That's not what I'm saying," Bellamy said. His voice grew deeper and rougher with rising frustration, like an invisible grip was squeezing at his vocal chords.

Clarke groaned in equal frustration and pitched forward, burying her face in her cross-legged lap, and when she was done resisting the urge to yell into her comforter and picked her head up, he was crouching by the side of her bed. And then her frustration left her, draining out of her in an instant, now that he was near and she was looking down at him.

"Clarke…" he began. His eyes were wide and shiner than she'd ever seen them. "I want you. Not just parts. And maybe that makes me selfish, but I want all of you. The whole damn thing."

"And," she began and stopped. She wanted to look down at her hands, to look away, but she found she couldn't. "What if I don't know how to do that?"

The corner of his mouth twitched up in a shy smile. "Doesn't matter. All that matters is if you wanna try," he said gently.

She held on to that for a long moment. She would have liked to say she was thinking about it, that there were thoughts swilling about in her head. But there weren't. She was just getting lost in the galaxies, the universes, the black holes of his irises.

"Okay," she finally said, as if she were floating through space.

"Okay?"

"Yeah," she nodded meekly. "Okay."

It was just a whisper. It felt so delicate, like it might break if it were anything more.

* * *

_Real life totally derailed me, guys. Got super duper distracting for a while there and I couldn't get my head back in this universe. I wanted to do it justice. Anyway, I very much hope you liked this chapter and are still along for the ride. Imma continue. It may be bumpy, but it's continuing. I love you all very dearly._


End file.
